A regional election was held in Andalusia on 19 June 2022 to elect the 12th Parliament of the autonomous community. All 109 seats in the Parliament were up for election.
The 2018 election resulted in the first majority for right-of-centre parties in Andalusia in 36 years, paving the way for an alternative government to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party of Andalusia (PSOE–A) despite the party remaining the most voted political force in the region. As a result, Juanma Moreno of the People's Party (PP) unseated PSOE's Susana Díaz as regional president, forming a coalition with Citizens (Cs), with confidence and supply from the Vox party. A number of disagreements saw Vox withdraw its support from the PP–Cs government in May 2021 and reject its proposed 2022 budget in November. Concurrently, Susana Díaz was replaced as regional PSOE leader by Seville mayor Juan Espadas in June 2021.
The election saw a landslide victory for the PP under a low turnout, with incumbent president Moreno being re-elected. The PP won in all eight provinces in Andalusia, with Seville flipping from the PSOE to the PP for the first time in Spanish democracy. In total, the PP took 58 of the 109 seats in Parliament, an increase of 32 from their 2018 result and an absolute majority of seats that was the first in its history, while taking 43% of the vote (up 22 points from the last election). The PSOE, which for the first time in history contested a regional election in Andalusia from opposition, got its worst result ever in the autonomous community, while Vox failed to fulfil expectations and saw only modest gains. Support for Cs collapsed, with the party being left out of parliament, whereas the left-wing vote divided between the For Andalusia (PorA) and Forward Andalusia (Adelante Andalucía) platforms.
Overview Under the 2007 Statute of Autonomy, the Parliament of Andalusia was the unicameral legislature of the homonymous autonomous community, having legislative power in devolved matters, as well as the ability to grant or withdraw confidence from a regional president.. The electoral and procedural rules were supplemented by national law provisions..
Date The term of the Parliament of Andalusia expired four years after the date of its previous election, unless it was dissolved earlier. The election decree was required to be issued no later than 25 days before the scheduled expiration date of parliament and published on the following day in the Official Gazette of the Regional Government of Andalusia (BOJA), with election day taking place 54 days after the decree's publication (barring any date within from 1 July to 31 August).; ( by ). The previous election was held on 2 December 2018, which meant that the chamber's term would have expired on 2 December 2022. The election decree was required to be published in the BOJA no later than 8 November 2022, setting the latest possible date for election day on 1 January 2023.
The regional president had the prerogative to dissolve the Parliament of Andalusia at any given time and call a snap election, provided that no motion of no confidence was in process and that dissolution did not occur before one year after a previous one.; . In the event of an investiture process failing to elect a regional president within a two-month period from the first ballot, the Parliament was to be automatically dissolved and a fresh election called..
In the aftermath of the May 2021 border crisis between Morocco and Spain, Vox announced it would end its confidence and supply arrangement with the PP–Cs ruling coalition after it became known that the authorities had agreed to take custody of 13 unaccompanied minors from Ceuta. This made the prospect of a snap election likelier, particularly following the gains achieved by the PP in the 2021 Madrilenian regional election at the expense of Cs. The Andalusian government initially responded by indicating a tentative date for the next election of Sunday, 27 November 2022, in order to dispel any rumours about the instability of the governing coalition. In November 2021, amid concerns that parliamentary negotiations would fail to deliver a budget for 2022 due to opposition from both the PSOE–A and Vox, it was suggested that a snap election would be called for either 27 February or 6 March, coinciding with the festivities of Andalusia Day. Together with speculation on an early election in Castile and León to be held in the spring of 2022, it was initially suggested that the two elections could be held simultaneously. On 30 November, several days after his 2022 budget was voted down by the parliament, President Juanma Moreno announced that an early election would be held but that his will was to set the election date for either June or October 2022, which meant that the Castilian-Leonese election, finally called for 13 February, would be held earlier. On 19 January 2022, Moreno announced that he would make up his mind about a snap election "throughout February", with an early dissolution that month bringing the regional election date to either April or May. The negative PP results and Vox's breakthrough in Castile and León forced a coalition government between the two in the region, leading Moreno's government to temporarily put any plans for a snap election on hold, with the originally scheduled date of 27 November returning to the spotlight.
The appointment of Alberto Núñez Feijóo as new national PP leader on 2 April 2022—replacing Pablo Casado—sparked renewed electoral interest in Andalusia, culminating in Moreno's announcement on 24 April that the regional election would be held before the summer. The following day it was confirmed that it would be held on 19 June, with the dissolution of parliament imminent. The Parliament of Andalusia was officially dissolved on 26 April 2022 with the publication of the corresponding decree in the BOJA, setting election day for 19 June and scheduling for the chamber to reconvene on 14 July..
Electoral system Voting for the Parliament was based on universal suffrage, comprising all Spanish nationals over 18 years of age, registered in Andalusia and with full political rights, provided that they had not been deprived of the right to vote by a final sentence.; ( by ). Additionally, non-resident citizens were required to apply for voting, a system known as "begged" voting ()..
The Parliament of Andalusia had a minimum of 109 seats, with electoral provisions fixing its size at that number. All were elected in eight multi-member constituencies—corresponding to the provinces of Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville, each of which was assigned an initial minimum of eight seats and the remaining 45 distributed in proportion to population (with the number of seats in each province not exceeding two times that of any other)—using the D'Hondt method and closed-list proportional voting, with a three percent-threshold of valid votes (including blank ballots) in each constituency.; . The use of this electoral method resulted in a higher effective threshold depending on district magnitude and vote distribution.
As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Parliament constituency was entitled the following seats:.
Seats Constituencies 18 Seville 17 Málaga 15 Cádiz 13 Granada 12 Almería, Córdoba 11 Huelva, Jaén
The law did not provide for by-elections to fill vacant seats; instead, any vacancies arising after the proclamation of candidates and during the legislative term were filled by the next candidates on the party lists or, when required, by designated substitutes. ( by ).
Outgoing parliament The table below shows the composition of the parliamentary groups in the chamber at the time of dissolution.
+ Parliamentary composition in April 2022 Groups Parties Legislators Seats Total Socialist Parliamentary Group PSOE–A 33 33 Andalusian People's Parliamentary Group PP 26 26 Citizens Parliamentary Group Cs 21 21 Vox Parliamentary Group in Andalusia Vox 11 11 United We Can for AndalusiaParliamentary Group IULV–CA 6 6 Non-Inscrits Adelante Andalucía 11 12 FE de las JONS 1
Parties and candidates The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, alliances and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form an alliance were required to inform the relevant electoral commission within 10 days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of at least one percent of the electorate in the constituencies for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list. ( by ). Additionally, a balanced composition of men and women was required in the electoral lists through the use of a zipper system..
Below is a list of the main parties and alliances which contested the election:
Candidacy Parties andalliances Leading candidate Ideology Previous result Vote % Seats PSOE–A Juan Espadas Social democracy 27.9% PP Juanma Moreno ConservatismChristian democracy 20.7% Cs Juan Marín Liberalism 18.3% PorA Inmaculada Nieto Left-wing populismGreen politics 16.6% AdelanteAndalucía Teresa Rodríguez Andalusian nationalismLeft-wing populismAnti-capitalism Vox Macarena Olona Right-wing populismUltranationalismNational conservatism 11.0%
In September 2021, citizen collectives of the so-called "Empty Spain" ( or España Vaciada), a coined term to refer to Spain's rural and largely unpopulated interior provinces, agreed to look for formulas to contest the next elections in Spain, inspired by the success of the Teruel Existe candidacy (Spanish for "Teruel Exists") in the November 2019 Spanish general election. By March 2022, the platform had announced that it would contest the Andalusian election in at least the Granada and Jaén provinces. However, in May the platform ruled out a candidacy in Granada, and only filed candidates in Jaén within the platform Jaén Merece Más (Spanish for "Jaén Deserves More").
In light of the party's negative outlook in recent opinion polls, Citizens (Cs) did not rule out establishing an electoral alliance with the People's Party (PP) to ease the prospects for a renewal of their coalition government, with such possibility being suggested by both the national and regional leaders of the party, Inés Arrimadas and Juan Marín, on 4 December 2021. The PP's national leadership rejected this possibility in the following days, which contrasted with the regional branch of the party being willing to study a merger between the two parties ahead of a regional election.
In December 2021, Más País, Greens Equo, Andalusia by Herself (AxSí) and Andalusian People's Initiative (IdPA) had agreed in a common platform—dubbed as Andaluces Levantaos, "Arise, o Andalusians", a reference to the Andalusian anthem—to contest the election. On 2 February 2022, it was revealed that Podemos, United Left/The Greens–Assembly for Andalusia (IULV–CA), Adelante Andalucía and the Andaluces Levantaos's parties had started talks to probe a prospective electoral alliance of all various parties to the left wing of the PSOE, in which each would retain a degree of autonomy in parliament, in order to prevent a severe vote dispersion that would deprive them of many seats. An early agreement was concluded in late March 2022, and by April 2022 that the new joint alliance of all these parties (with the exception of Adelante Andalucía and AxSí) would be named as Por Andalucía (Spanish for "For Andalusia"), for which Podemos suggested its Congress deputy Juan Antonio Delgado as the prospective candidate. In the end, an electoral alliance was agreed between Podemos, IULV–CA, Greens Equo, Green Alliance (AV), Más País and Andalusian People's Initiative (IdPA), but because Podemos and AV failed to fill the required documentation ahead of the legal deadline, both parties found themselves unable to be awarded full party rights within the coalition.