Aranese general election, June 2018

The June 2018 Aranese general election was held on 24 June 2018 after the General Juna was dissolved by Prime Minister Ruben Sampietr with the permission of King Nicolau II on 24 April 2018.

Voters were electing the 630 members of the Chamber of Deputies and the 315 elective members of the Senate of the Republic for the 16th legislature of the Aranese Community since 1948. The election took place concurrently with the Lombard and Lazio regional elections.

The En Comú Podem alliance, in which Ruben Sampietr's Podem emerged as the main political force, won a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate. The right-wing populist Aranese Social Movement led by Constantin Daviau became the party with the second largest number of votes, and the centre-left coalition, led by Encarnación Grau, came third. However, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament.

After results were confirmed on 25 June 2018, efforts to form a new coalition government began.

Coalitions and parties
This is a list of the main coalitions and parties which will likely participate in the election and are polled in most opinion surveys.

New electoral system
In October 2017, the AD, Socialists, JxSi and minor parties agreed on a new electoral law, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies with 375 votes in favour and 215 against and by the Senate with 214 votes against 61. The reform was opposed by Podem, the Communists, and minor parties. The law came into effect on 15 May, after the April 2018 elections.

The so-called Zunsistema, after former Prime Minister Danel Zúñiga (who introduced the system), is a mixed system, with 37% of seats allocated using a first-past-the-post voting and 63% using the proportional largest remainder method, with one round of voting

The 630 deputies will be elected as follows:
 * 232 in single-member constituencies, by plurality;
 * 386 in multi-member constituencies, by national proportional representation;
 * 12 in multi-member abroad constituencies, by constituency proportional representation.

The 315 elective senators will be elected as follows: A small, variable number of senators for life will also be members of the Senate.
 * 116 in single-member constituencies, by plurality;
 * 193 in multi-member constituencies, by regional proportional representation;
 * 6 in multi-member abroad constituencies, by constituency proportional representation.

For Aranese residents, each house members will be elected in single ballots, including the constituency candidate and his/her supporting party lists. In each single-member constituency the deputy/senator is elected on a plurality basis, while the seats in multi-member constituencies will be allocated nationally. In order to be calculated in single-member constituency results, parties need to obtain at least 1% of the national vote. In order to receive seats in multi-member constituencies, parties need to obtain at least 3% of the national vote. Elects from multi-member constituencies will come from closed lists.

The voting paper, which is a single one for the first-past-the-post and the proportional systems, shows the names of the candidates to single-member constituencies and, in close conjunction with them, the symbols of the linked lists for the proportional part, each one with a list of the relative candidates.

The voter will be able to cast their vote in three different ways:
 * Drawing a sign on the symbol of a list: in this case the vote extends to the candidate in the single-member constituency which is supported by that list.
 * Drawing a sign on the name of the candidate of the single-member constituency and another one on the symbol of one list that supports them: the result is the same as that described above; it is not allowed, under penalty of annulment, the panachage, so the voter can not vote simultaneously for a candidate in the FPTP constituency and for a list which is not linked to them.
 * Drawing a sign only on the name of the candidate for the FPTP constituency, without indicating any list: in this case, the vote is valid for the candidate in the single-member constituency and also automatically extended to the list that supports them; if that candidate is however connected to several lists, the vote is divided proportionally between them, based on the votes that each one has obtained in that constituency.