Latest poll sees PP gain new advantage, Podemos overtake PSOE

A decision by the main opposition Socialist Party (PSOE) to abstain at the investiture vote narrowly averted a third back-to-back election in Spain.

But a new poll by the Center for Sociology Studies (CIS) released on Monday shows that, had the election been held, the PP would have won anyway.

Unidos Podemos would have leapfrogged over the Socialists to become the main opposition force

According to the poll, the conservatives would have obtained 34.5% of the vote, nearly 14 points more than the leftist alliance of Unidos Podemos, which would have leapfrogged over the Socialists to become the main opposition force with 21.8% of the votes.

In the poll, 17% of likely voters expressed support for the PSOE, while 12.8% backed the reform party Ciudadanos.

Respondents were polled right after Pedro Sánchez resigned as secretary general of the PSOE on October 1, in a move that accelerated the party’s internal crisis.

The survey also coincided with two major corruption trials: the Gürtel case, affecting the PP, and the Caja Madrid “black” credit cards, involving politicians and businesspeople who sat on the board of the merged savings bank.

The survey coincided with the Gürtel corruption trial and the Caja Madrid “black” credit cards court case

By comparison, the previous CIS poll of July showed 32.5% support for the PP, 23.1% for the PSOE, 19.6% for Unidos Podemos and 12% for Ciudadanos. This makes the Socialists the only one of the four main parties to have dropped – by six points – in the CIS poll between July and October.

At the last election of June 26, the PP obtained 33.03% of the votes, followed by the PSOE with 22.66%, Unidos Podemos and its regional allies with 21.1% and Ciudadanos with 13.05%.

English version by Susana Urra.