President Obama is jealous of Europe. During a 2009 town hall in Strasbourg he quipped “in addition to being jealous about high-speed rail and the nice trains here, I'm also jealous of the fact that campaigns here only last a few months.” Much like the U.S., Spain is having an election at the moment. In fact, they're right smack in the middle of the 15-day official campaign period.
By the time this campaign is over, Spain's political parties will have spent a total of just six months campaigning. Despite President Zapatero'sannouncement in April that he would not run for a third term in the general election, his Socialist Workers' Party got trounced in May's municipal elections due to general frustration with his inability to solve Spain's economic woes. From that point it was game on for all political parties and in July, Mr. Zapatero had no choice but to move up the general election from March, 2012 to November 20, 2011 when the center-right opposition Popular Party is expected to win an absolute majority in parliament.
Spain's short campaigns are in part due to the fact that their political parties have no obligation to open their candidate selection processes to the people, or even to their own militant members. Mariano Rajoy, president of the center-right Popular Party, was hand chosen by former President Jose Maria Aznar to be his successor. This highly criticized practice is referred to as the dedazo (big finger). The Socialist Workers' Party could have chosen to fill Mr. Zapatero's place via a primary, but under pressure to maintain party unity after the crushing defeat in May, Defense Minister Carme Chacon announced she would not seek the nomination. Many aptly accused party leaders of wielding their own dedazo as they approved the inevitable Interior Minister Alfredo Rubalcaba as their candidate.
The “official” 15-day campaign period, not only cuts down on the amount of time incumbents spend on the campaign trail but also saves money. Spain's current official campaign began at midnight on November 4th and marked when campaign communication could openly ask for the vote. Campaign law does not prohibit advertising before the official campaign start, but the Socialists and the Popular Party made a deal not to do so due to budget concerns. This is unimaginable in the U.S. where campaigns compete to be the first on air, but Spain's campaigns are mostly publicly financed and subsequently much more restricted in their spending.
As a result of both time and spending limits, there is also a lot less negative campaign advertising in Spain. Each political party gets allotted airtime on state-run television and radio stations, according to the percentage of the vote they won in the last election. Total campaign spending is limited to 12 million euros per party and there are no Super-PACs to do the dirty work them. This is important because many studies have shown that negative campaigning tends to suppress voter turnout.
We could point to Spain's higher voter turnout rates as proof that less political communication is more. Turnout for Spain's 2008 general election was 74% while in the United States, this figure was a dismal 57%. There is certainly more than one explanation for this but I suspect that the practice of limiting campaigns is a critical piece of the puzzle.
Spanish elections certainly have room for improvement, such as meaningful citizen participation in the candidate selection process. However, Spain's time limit on the madness is good policy and is a reform that might be more easily embraced in the U.S. than public financing.