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Socialist Party Opens Lead in Spanish Poll, El Confidencial Says

Socialist Party Opens Lead in Spanish Poll, El Confidencial Says

(Bloomberg) -- Spain’s ruling Socialist party has opened up a lead in an IMOP Insights poll three months after taking power following a no-confidence vote that ousted Premier Mariano Rajoy, El Confidencial reports.

The Socialists, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, would gain 26.5 percent of votes if an election were held today compared with the 20.6 percent they would have had in the previous survey carried out in May, El Confidencial said.

Ciudadanos fell to second place with 23.9 percent compared to 28.6 percent in May while Rajoy’s Popular Party would capture 20.3 percent of votes and the anti-establishment Unidos Podemos 15.4 percent, a decline of 4.2 percentage points.

Sanchez is leading Spain’s most fragile government since the country returned to democracy 40 years ago. His Socialist Party accounts for just 84 of Parliament’s 350 members and is struggling to push through measures in Congress including the approval of next year’s budget.

The poll of 1,012 interviews was carried out between Sept. 6 and Sept. 11, which came before the resignation of Health Minister Carmen Monton amid news reports doubting the validity of her master’s degree and allegations that Sanchez plagiarized his academic thesis. El Confidencial didn’t provide a margin of error.

To contact the reporter on this story: Charlie Devereux in Madrid at cdevereux3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net, Charles Daly, Kevin Costelloe

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