Spain holds elections after the killing ends campaign

Zapatero’s Socialist Party had a lead of about four percentage points over the conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) led by Mariano Rajoy in the last opinion polls published Monday. If the results of the survey are confirmed, the Socialists would be re-elected but once again fall short of an absolute majority.

All parties called off campaigning on Friday just hours before it was officially due to close at midnight after former town councilman Isaias Carrasco, a Socialist, was shot and killed in the Basque town of Mondragon. There have been no claims of responsibility for the shooting but police said it had the hallmark of the outlawed Basque separatist movement ETA, which has killed over 800 people in bombings and shootings in its nearly 40-year campaign for an independent homeland.

Zapatero, 47, accused ETA of seeking to upset the electoral process with the shooting. He had scored a surprise election win over 52-year-old Rajoy on March 14, 2004 amid the shock of commuter train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people just three days earlier in Europe’s deadliest such attack since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

Voters were infuriated over the PP governments insistence that ETA was to blame for the attacks, even though evidence pointed to Islamic extremists angered by Madrid’s role in the Iraq war. After the election, Zapatero responded to popular opinion in Spain and withdrew the country’s troops from Iraq. Following the 2004 elections, Zapatero was 12 seats short of an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament. He has governed for the past four years with the support of smaller regional and left-wing parties.

Throughout Zapatero’s first term in office, the PP railed against his failed bid to negotiate peace with ETA but has focused its campaign on the slowing economy and the rapid rise in immigration. Zapatero, who has brought in popular liberal reforms such as same-sex marriage, fast-track divorce and a gender-equality law, has campaigned as the face of a modern, progressive Spain that his government helped to create.

Some 35 million voters are called on to elect the 350 members of the Cortes, the lower house of parliament, as well as 208 of the 264 members of the Senate, or upper house. The 56 Senate seats not concerned by Sundays vote are filled by indirect election by the parliaments of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions. Regional elections are also being held in the southern region of Andalusia which is a stronghold of the Socialist Party.

Polling stations opened 9:00 am (0800 GMT) and are scheduled to close at 8:00 pm (1900 GMT). Television stations will announce exit survey results as soon as the polling stations close and final official results are expected on Sunday night.