2012 Galician regional election

The 2012 Galician regional election was held on Sunday, 21 October 2012, to elect the 9th Parliament of the autonomous community of Galicia. All 75 seats in the Parliament were up for election. The election was held simultaneously with a regional election in the Basque Country.

President Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced the election following Lehendakari Patxi López's decision to schedule a Basque snap regional election for 21 October 2012. The vote was seen as an electoral test on the economic policy of Mariano Rajoy's government, which had been elected at the 2011 Spanish general election and had undertaken harsh spending cuts which had seen its popularity ratings plummet in opinion polls. Feijóo aimed at securing reelection for a second term in office at the helm of the regional People's Party (PP), for which he needed the party to retain the absolute majority it commanded in parliament to prevent an alternative coalition being formed between the Socialists' Party of Galicia (PSdeG–PSOE) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), similarly to the one in power in the 2005–2009 period.

The election resulted in an increased majority for Feijóo, as support for both the PSdeG and BNG plunged amid internal party infighting and disillusion from left-from-centre voters. The Galician Left Alternative (AGE) alliance, headed by former BNG leader Xosé Manuel Beiras and comprising United Left (EU) and Beiras's newly-created party Anova, obtained a surprise result with 200,000 votes and 14% of the share, scoring in third place regionally and displacing the PSdeG in second place in the cities of A Coruña, Ferrol and Santiago de Compostela. The fragmentation of the left-wing vote and the high abstention rate—with slightly over 45% of the electorate not casting a ballot—favoured the PP enlarging its majority despite seeing a drop of over 100,000 ballots from 2009.