1996 Spanish general election

1996 Spanish general election

← 1993 3 March 1996 2000 →
All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 208 (of 257) seats in the Senate 176 seats needed for a majority in the Congress of Deputies
Opinion polls
Registered	32,531,833 4.8%
Turnout	25,172,058 (77.4%) 1.0 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader José María Aznar Felipe González Julio Anguita Party PP PSOE IU Leader since 4 September 1989 28 September 1979 12 February 1989 Leader's seat Madrid Madrid Madrid Last election 142 seats, 35.4%[a] 159 seats, 38.8% 18 seats, 9.6% Seats won 156 141 21 Seat change 14 18 3 Popular vote 9,716,006 9,425,678 2,639,774 Percentage 38.8% 37.6% 10.5% Swing 3.4 pp 1.2 pp 0.9 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Joaquim Molins Iñaki Anasagasti José Carlos Mauricio Party CiU EAJ/PNV CC Leader since 1 February 1995 1986 1996 Leader's seat Barcelona Biscay Las Palmas Last election 17 seats, 4.9% 5 seats, 1.2% 4 seats, 0.9% Seats won 16 5 4 Seat change 1 0 0 Popular vote 1,151,633 318,951 220,418 Percentage 4.6% 1.3% 0.9% Swing 0.3 pp 0.1 pp 0.0 pp
Election results by Congress of Deputies constituency
Prime Minister before election Felipe González PSOE Prime Minister after election José María Aznar PP

The 1996 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 3 March 1996, to elect the 6th Cortes Generales of the Kingdom of Spain. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 257 seats in the Senate.

Ever since forming a minority government after its victory in the 1993 election, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) had been rocked by the unveiling of a string of corruption scandals, including the party's illegal financing, misuse of public funds to pay for undeclared bonuses to party officials and allegations of state terrorism. The 1996 election was triggered following the withdrawal of parliamentary support from Convergence and Union (CiU) to the Socialist government of Felipe González in mid 1995.

The election resulted in the first PSOE defeat in a general election since 1982, but predictions of a landslide of the opposition José María Aznar's People's Party (PP) failed to materialize. The PP had been widely expected to make gains after resounding wins in the 1994 European Parliament election and 1995 local and regional elections, with polls suggesting Aznar winning an outright overall majority or coming short of it by few seats would be the most likely scenario. Instead, the election turned into the closest result between the two major parties in the Spanish democratic period to date; a PSOE comeback, fueled by a strong 77.4% voter turnout, the highest scored ever since, left the PP leading by just 1.2 percentage points and 290,000 votes, falling 20 seats short of an absolute majority. Julio Anguita's United Left (IU) also failed to meet expectations, despite scoring their best overall result in a general election since the Communist Party of Spain (PCE)'s results in 1979.

At 156 seats, this would be the worst performance for a winning party in the democratic period until the PP's result in the 2015 election. As a consequence of the election result, Aznar was forced to tone down his attacks to Catalan and Basque nationalists in order to garner their support for his investiture. After two months of negotiations, agreements were reached with CiU, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and Canarian Coalition (CC), enabling for José María Aznar to become prime minister of a centre-right minority cabinet, marking the end of 13+1⁄2 years of Socialist government.
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