The political parties, federations, coalitions, and groups of voters have until midnight this Monday to register their candidacies for Congress and the Senate ahead of the general elections on November 29. These lists will appear in the Official State Bulletin (BOE) on Wednesday, October 28.
The end of the deadline will serve to clarify several uncertainties about the configuration of the candidacies, such as whether Vox will finally accept not to run in certain Senate constituencies, as requested by the PP to avoid the fragmentation of the vote, or what the final composition of the lists of the coalition between PSOE and Frente Amplio for the Upper House will be.
Once the lists are registered, the Provincial Electoral Boards will have two days to point out the irregularities detected or reported in the candidacies. The political formations will have a period of 48 hours from the notification to correct those defects. Once this phase is completed, the Boards will have until November 2 to proclaim the candidacies, which will be published in the BOE the following day.
Fewer coalitions than in 2023
Parties and federations registered in the Registry of Political Parties of the Ministry of the Interior, as well as the electoral coalitions formalized last week, can present candidacies. This time, nine have been registered: two are running exclusively for Congress, three for the Senate, and another four are of regional scope and are competing in both chambers. In the 2023 elections, twelve coalitions participated: three of state scope, one specific to the Senate, and eight regional.
The most significant coalition for 29N in the Lower House is that of Frente Amplio, led by Ada Colau and Emilio Delgado, which failed to reach a global agreement with Podemos, except in the Canary Islands and the Valencian Community. For the Senate, the most notable alliance is the one formed between PSOE and Frente Amplio in all constituencies, except in the Catalan, Canary, and Balearic ones.
Endorsement of 0.1% for parties without representation
In the case of parties, federations, and coalitions that did not obtain representation in either of the two chambers in the last general elections, it is required to collect the signatures of at least 0.1% of the registered voters in the census of each constituency they wish to compete in.
This requirement affects, for example, Se Acabó la Fiesta (SALF), of the MEP Luis 'Alvise' Pérez, and the new party 'Democracia 21', which has been configured as a coalition with Ciudadanos and UCIN and aspires to present itself in the constituencies of Madrid and Barcelona.
Electorate groups will also be able to run, although in their case they must gather support from at least 1% of the voters registered in the corresponding constituency census. No voter may lend their signature of endorsement to more than one candidacy.
New: zipper lists of men and women
Another of the requirements that candidacies must meet is respect for the principle of electoral parity, which for the first time in a general election requires that the lists for Congress be made up of women and men placed alternately.
Until now, the Electoral Law established that the lists must have at least 40% of candidates of each sex and that none could exceed 60%, a proportion that must also be maintained in each segment of five positions. However, the reform introduced by Organic Law 2/2024, on parity representation, has replaced this model with the so-called gender zipper lists.
This balanced composition must be respected throughout the candidacy, without differentiating between main candidates and substitutes, and will also be required when candidacies for the Senate are presented grouped in lists. This aims to ensure that the configuration of both chambers is practically equal.
1,090 lists were presented in 2023
In the elections of the summer of 2023, the Provincial Electoral Boards proclaimed a total of 1,090 lists for the Cortes Generales (550 for Congress and 540 for the Senate), 186 fewer than in 2019. In the review, 66 candidacies from extraparliamentary formations were excluded due to errors, failure to meet requirements, or, mainly, for not providing the required endorsements.
In total, 4,892 candidates competed on July 23, 2023, for the 350 seats in Congress and the 208 in the Senate -- this year one more is elected following the constitutional reform that allowed for the creation of a senator for the island of Formentera -- which meant an average of ten candidates for each seat in the Lower House and 5.5 for each seat in the Senate Palace.