2015 Constantinopolitan general election (Queen of Cities)

The 2015 Constantinopolitan general election was held on May 3, 2015 in the aftermath of the dissolution of the coalition between the Liberal Reform Party and Public Place after a series of corruption investigations were launched against high-ranking members of the PLR, which led to the dissolution of the 21st Parliament and the appointment of Adam Nowakowski as interim prime minister. The election resulted in the country's most divided legislature since 1976 with New Way setting the record for the least seats won by the largest party in Parliament in the country's 90-year history. After two months of negotiations, New Way's Suleiman Euzdemir formed a five-party center-left coalition government.

This election marked a seismic shift in Constantinopolitan politics as the two parties that had dominated the country's politics since the late 1990s, New Way and the Liberal Reform Party, obtained their lowest share of the popular vote since 1993 and 1976 respectively. Unlike in 2009 however, this was not attributed to the rise of left-wing parties as the major winners of this election proved to be the liberal Together for Change and the national-conservative Renewal Party that rose in the aftermath of the various scandals that had undermined the Liberal Reformists in the last two years.

Electoral system
The 200 deputies of Parliament were chosen from a single nationwide electoral district via closed-list proportional representation for a four-year term. The number of seats of each party was determined by utilizing the D'Hondt method with a 5% threshold that parties would need to cross in order to get any seats. In accordance with the 2003 Gender Equality Law each party's electoral list would need to be 50% female and 50% male.

Background
Since the 2013 election, the country had fully recovered from the Great Recession as economic growth soared to an average of 9% between 2013 and 2015. While the country's debt was under control and the government ran a budget surplus, this was achieved through unpopular fiscal austerity measures that were imposed on the country by the International Monetary Fund. Despite the unpopularity of austerity, prime ministers Djelal (who had to retire because of health issues) and Adamyan remained popular.

The election was held in the midst of the ongoing 2015 European migrant crisis as the country accepted 25,000 refugees since the beginning of 2015 despite the government's anti-immigration stance. The expected arrival of hundreds of thousands of new migrants to Europe led to a prolonged debate over the city-state's responsibility in accepting refugees. The new Renewal Party campaigned on their opposition to illegal immigration.

Political parties
For their registration in order to be able to participate in the 2013 election political parties had to pay a €20,000 deposit and be able to garner at least 27 endorsements from elected officials (arrondissement mayors or councilors). For the 2013 election, 20 parties were able to make it onto the ballot. However, of these 20 parties only ten had a realistic chance of getting past the 5% threshold.