Turnout: 66.59%
About this election
The Spanish general election of 23 July 2023 was a snap vote called by Pedro Sánchez immediately after the PSOE's poor showing in that May's local and regional elections, in a gamble to deny the right time to build momentum. The result confounded the polls: although the People's Party (PP) under Alberto Núñez Feijóo finished first, it and the far-right Vox fell short of a majority, while the PSOE held up far better than expected. After months of negotiation, Sánchez was re-invested as prime minister with the support of the Catalan and Basque nationalists — at the price of a controversial amnesty for those involved in the 2017 independence push.
The 350 deputies were elected, as ever, by D'Hondt proportional representation in the 50 provinces and Ceuta and Melilla, with a 3% provincial threshold. The election was effectively a contest between two blocs: a right of PP and Vox, and a left of PSOE and the new Sumar platform, with the balance held by a handful of regional and nationalist parties whose dozen-odd seats would decide who could reach the 176 needed for a majority.
The summer campaign — unusually held in the holiday season — pitted Feijóo, a moderate Galician who had replaced Pablo Casado in 2022, against Sánchez. The central question was whether the PP would need Vox to govern; the prospect of Santiago Abascal's party entering a national government, after the two had already formed regional coalitions, mobilised left-wing and progressive voters. On the left, the labour minister Yolanda Díaz had assembled fifteen parties, including Podemos, into the Sumar coalition to consolidate the space.
The PP won 33.06% and 137 seats — a strong gain — but Vox fell to 12.38% and 33 seats, leaving the right bloc on 170, short of a majority. The PSOE confounded expectations with 31.68% and 121 seats, actually improving on 2019, and Sumar took 12.33% and 31. The decisive seats went to the regionalists: ERC (7), Junts (7), EH Bildu (6), the PNV (5), the BNG (1), the Canarian Coalition (1) and UPN (1). Turnout was 66.59%.
Feijóo, as leader of the largest party, was invited to form a government but lost his investiture vote in September, unable to find partners beyond Vox. Sánchez then assembled a majority that, crucially, required the seven votes of Carles Puigdemont's Junts. The price was an amnesty law for those prosecuted over the 2017 Catalan referendum — a deeply divisive concession that provoked large protests on the right but secured Sánchez's re-investiture in November 2023, beginning a new and precarious term dependent on the Catalan independence parties.
The PP swept the interior and the north — both Castiles, Galicia, Madrid, Murcia, Cantabria, La Rioja and Aragon — and led in Andalusia, where it overtook the PSOE. The Socialists held Catalonia (where the PSC finished first), the Basque Country, Navarre, Asturias and Extremadura, and ran the PP close across the south. The nationalist parties carried their communities, with EH Bildu drawing level with the PNV in the Basque Country.
Official results from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior (infoelectoral.interior.gob.es). Vote shares are of valid votes; the regional map is coloured by the leading party in each autonomous community.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.