Word: socialists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...long after the polls closed here at 8 pm, supporters of Zapatero began dancing outside Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid. Although the official count wouldn't be released for several hours, the crowd was confident that their man had won the national elections - decisively. And indeed by 11:30pm, with roughly 90% of the ballots counted, the Socialists had won 43.87% of the vote, while the opposition Popular Party held...
...victory speech Sunday night, Spain's newly re-elected socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, spoke of unity, claiming that "Spaniards have spoken with clarity, and they have decided to open a new era - a new era without antagonism, an era that excludes confrontation, an era that looks for agreement when it comes to affairs of State." But both the campaign that preceded the election and the results themselves suggest much the opposite - that Spain will become even more polarized between right and left than it already...
...Socialists, the victory confirms that most Spaniards support the broad, progressive social initiatives the party has made a hallmark of its government during the past four years. "This is a victory for the idea of a politics that defends dialogue, plurality, and cohesion, and that rejects antagonism," said Socialist party spokesperson José Blanco in an early victory speech...
...After members of the Basque separatist group ETA killed a former Socialist councilman on Friday, speculation also ran high that sympathy for the victim would lead to a greater turnout for the Socialists. But of a dozen voters interviewed as they left a Madrid polling place today, none said the assassination had influenced his or her vote. José López was typical: "We've lived with this problem for 30 years," the 46-year-old contractor said. "It's not going to change anything...
...latest polls, conducted before the assassination, gave the Socialists a 4.1% lead over the Popular Party, and with voter turnout emerging as a key factor in these elections, the effect of today's killing is, in fact, hard to predict. Jose Ramon Montero, political scientist at Madrid's Autonomous University, believes the assassination "will certainly have an effect, but perhaps in a different direction than you might expect. Certainly there is a parallel with what happened in the last elections," he says, referring to the surprise ouster of the Popular Party government in the wake of the 2004 Madrid subway...