Spain Poll Shows Socialists Falling Short of Majority Once Again

(Bloomberg) -- Spain’s Socialists would once more be the most voted party in an electoral rerun but would still fall short of a majority, according to an IMOP Insights poll published by El Confidencial.

The Socialists have almost exactly the same support they garnered in April’s vote, with the survey giving them 28.3% versus the 28.7% at the time. Their traditional rivals, the conservative People’s Party, stand to gain the most from fresh elections, rising to 20.1% from 16.7%. Ciudadanos would plunge to 10.7% from 15.9% while Podemos would fall to 12%, the survey found.

Spain is set for elections on Nov. 10 after acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez failed to secure enough support in parliament to form a new government. He won April’s vote but fell well short of an overall majority, and his effort to form an alliance with anti-austerity group Podemos ultimately failed due to disagreements over ministerial posts. The new elections will be the fourth Spain holds in as many years.

The nationwide poll of 1,277 computer-assisted telephone interviews was carried out Oct. 1-3 and has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

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, Jana Randow, Pete Norman

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