Spain's Socialists Top Country's EU Election Survey: El Pais

(Bloomberg) -- Spain’s Socialist party would win 29% of the vote in European elections to be held May 26, replacing the conservative People’s Party as the country’s biggest group in the continental chamber, according to a poll carried out by 40dB and published by El Pais newspaper Saturday.

The party of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would win 17 of the 54 seats allocated to Spain, followed by the People’s Party with 11 seats and 19% of vote. That would flip the result of the last election in 2014, when the conservative group held 16 seats and the Socialists 14.

The liberals of Ciudadanos would come third with nine seats and 16%, followed by the anti-establishment Unidas Podemos Cambiar Europa with between eight and nine seats and 15% of the votes.

The nationalists of Vox would debut in the European chamber with 8.4% and win between four and five seats. Ahora Republicas, a platform grouping regional parties including Catalonia’s Esquerra Republicana, whose pro-independence leader Oriol Junqueras was jailed for his role in holding an illegal referendum on breaking away from Spain, is set to win three seats and 5.5% of the vote.

Another Catalan separatist group, Junts, whose high-profile members include former regional president Carles Puigdemont, who remains in exile after the referendum and a failed declaration of independence, would obtain one seat and 2.5% of the vote.

To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Gualtieri in Madrid at tgualtieri@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Charles Penty at cpenty@bloomberg.net, Andrew Davis

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