2003 Madrid municipal election
A municipal election was held in Madrid on Sunday, 25 May 2003, to elect the 7th City Council of the municipality. All 55 seats in the City Council were up for election. It was held concurrently with regional elections in thirteen autonomous communities and local elections all across Spain.
The People's Party under President of the Community of Madrid Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, who was succeeding the retiring José María Álvarez del Manzano, managed to revert the near-tie situation predicted by opinion polls between his party and the PSOE-IU bloc. Gallardón went on to win a comfortable absolute majority both in votes and seats, reverting the 1999 result in which it had seemed that party's support had begun to decline. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party under Trinidad Jiménez obtained its best result since it was ousted from power in 1989, despite it not being enough to recover the mayoralty. United Left continued on its long-term decline and lost another seat, scoring its worst result since 1987.
A remarkable event for this election was that both main parties' contenders were cousins, despite belonging to opposing parties.
Overview
Under the 1978 Constitution, the governance of municipalities in Spain—part of the country's local government system—was centered on the figure of city councils, local corporations with independent legal personality composed of a mayor, a government council and an elected legislative assembly. In the case of Madrid, the top-tier administrative and governing body was the City Council of Madrid.Electoral system
Voting for local assemblies was on the basis of universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age, registered and residing in the municipality of Madrid and in full enjoyment of their political rights, as well as resident non-national European citizens and those whose country of origin allowed Spanish nationals to vote in their own elections by virtue of a treaty.Local councillors were elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional voting system, with an electoral threshold of five percent of valid votes being applied in each municipality. Each municipality constituted a multi-member constituency, entitled a number of seats based on the following scale:
| Population | Councillors |
| <250 | 5 |
| 251–1,000 | 7 |
| 1,001–2,000 | 9 |
| 2,001–5,000 | 11 |
| 5,001–10,000 | 13 |
| 10,001–20,000 | 17 |
| 20,001–50,000 | 21 |
| 50,001–100,000 | 25 |
| >100,001 | +1 per each 100,000 inhabitants or fraction +1 if total is an even number |
The law did not provide for by-elections to fill vacated seats; instead, any vacancies that occurred after the proclamation of candidates and into the legislative term were to be covered by the successive candidates in the list and, when required, by the designated substitutes.
The mayor was indirectly elected by the local assembly. A legal clause required candidates to earn the vote of an absolute majority of councillors, or else the candidate of the most-voted party was to be automatically appointed to the post. In the event of a tie, the appointee was to be determined by lot.
Election date
The term of city councils in Spain expired four years after the date of their previous election, with election day being fixed for the fourth Sunday of May every four years. The election decree was required to be issued no later than the fifty-fifth day prior to the scheduled election date and published on the following day in the Official State Gazette. The previous local elections were held on 13 June 1999, setting the date for election day on the fourth Sunday of May four years later, which was 25 May 2003.Local councils could not be dissolved before the expiry of their term, except in cases of mismanagement that seriously harmed the public interest and implied a breach of constitutional obligations, in which case the Council of Ministers could—optionally—agree to call a by-election.
Elections to local councils were officially called on 1 April 2003 with the publication of the corresponding decree in the BOE, setting election day for 25 May.
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 ahead of an election were required to inform the relevant electoral commission within ten days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of a determined amount of the electors registered in the municipality for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. In the case of Madrid, as its population was over 1,000,001, at least 8,000 signatures were required.Below is a list of the main parties and electoral alliances which contested the election:
Opinion polls
The tables below list opinion polling results in reverse chronological order, showing the most recent first and using the dates when the survey fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication. Where the fieldwork dates are unknown, the date of publication is given instead. The highest percentage figure in each polling survey is displayed with its background shaded in the leading party's colour. If a tie ensues, this is applied to the figures with the highest percentages. The "Lead" column on the right shows the percentage-point difference between the parties with the highest percentages in a poll.Voting intention estimates
The table below lists weighted voting intention estimates. Refusals are generally excluded from the party vote percentages, while question wording and the treatment of "don't know" responses and those not intending to vote may vary between polling organisations. When available, seat projections determined by the polling organisations are displayed below the percentages in a smaller font; 28 seats were required for an absolute majority in the City Council of Madrid.Voting preferences
The table below lists raw, unweighted voting preferences.Victory preferences
The table below lists opinion polling on the victory preferences for each party in the event of a municipal election taking place.| Polling firm/Commissioner | Fieldwork date | Sample size | Other/ None | Lead | ||||
| Polling firm/Commissioner | Fieldwork date | Sample size | Other/ None | Lead | ||||
| Ipsos–Eco/ABC | 22–24 Apr 2003 | ? | 42.6 | 34.2 | 5.6 | 1.8 | 15.7 | 8.4 |
Victory likelihood
The table below lists opinion polling on the perceived likelihood of victory for each party in the event of a municipal election taking place.| Polling firm/Commissioner | Fieldwork date | Sample size | Other/ None | Lead | |||
| Polling firm/Commissioner | Fieldwork date | Sample size | Other/ None | Lead | |||
| Ipsos–Eco/ABC | 22–24 Apr 2003 | ? | 56.2 | 23.3 | 1.0 | 19.5 | 32.9 |
| Ipsos–Eco/ABC | 6–13 Sep 2002 | ? | 54.4 | 18.1 | 0.6 | 26.8 | 36.3 |