2000 Spanish general election

A general election was held in Spain on Sunday, 12 March 2000, to elect the members of the 7th Cortes Generales. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 259 seats in the Senate. At four years since the previous election, the 2000 general election ended the longest legislative period up to that point since the Spanish transition to democracy.

The incumbent People's Party (PP) of Prime Minister José María Aznar secured an unexpected absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 183 out of 350 seats and increasing its margin of victory with the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) to 2.4 million votes. The PSOE did not benefit from a pre-election agreement with United Left (IU) and lost 1.6 million votes and 16 seats, coupled to the 1.4 million votes and 13 seats lost by IU. Such an alliance was said to prompt tactical voting for the PP, which also benefited from economic growth, a moderate stance during its tenure and internal struggles within the opposition parties. For the first time since the Spanish transition to democracy, the PP results exceeded the combined totals for PSOE and IU. PSOE leader Joaquín Almunia announced his resignation immediately after results were known.

Regional and peripheral nationalist parties improved their results, except for Convergence and Union (CiU)—which had been in electoral decline for a decade following its support of Spanish governments—and Herri Batasuna/Euskal Herritarrok (EH), which urged to boycott the election and called for their supporters to abstain in the Basque Country and Navarre. The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) benefitted from EH's absence and gained two seats, whereas both Canarian Coalition (CC) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) had strong showings in their respective regions. Initiative for Catalonia (IC), which had split from IU in 1997, clinged on to parliamentary representation but suffered from the electoral competition with United and Alternative Left (EUiA), IU's newly-founded regional branch in Catalonia which failed to secure any seat. This would be the first and only general election in which both parties would contest each other.

This election featured some notable feats: this was the first absolute majority the PP obtained in a general election, with its best result in both popular vote share and seats up until then (only exceeded in 2011). In contrast, the PSOE got its worst election result in 21 years. This was also the second time a party received more than 10 million votes, the last time being in 1982, when 10.1 million voters voted for Felipe González's PSOE. Voter turnout was one of the lowest for Spanish election standards, with only 68.7% of the electorate casting a vote.