Further opinion poll confirms changes on Spanish political scene

An opinion poll published on Sunday confirmed the major changes in the Spanish political panorama shown by other polls during the week.

The opinion poll was compiled by the company Metroscope and published in the El Pais newspaper on Sunday.

The Metroscope poll, which is the third poll to be published in Spain this week, gives first place in voting intentions to the left-wing Podemos party.

According to El Pais, the party would win 28.4 percent of the vote in a forthcoming election, echoing the numbers published in a poll carried out by radio station Cadena Ser on Friday.

This implies that Podemos' support continues to rise after a spectacular rise following its foundation in February last year and that support has stabilized despite attacks from the more established parties.

Second place in voting intentions goes to the Socialist Party (PSOE), who would take 23.5 percent, while the governing Popular Party (PP) would see less than one in five Spaniards voting for them, with just 19.2 percent.

It should be highlighted that PP and PSOE together would currently win just 42.7 percent of the total vote, which is below the 44 percent that the PP won alone in the 2011 general elections.

Apart from the arrival of Podemos on the political scene, the center-right formation Ciudadanos (Citizens) has also hurt the traditional parties. Citizens was original set up in the Catalan region to represent Catalans who were not in favor of the PP or the PSOE, but against the independence of the region.

The party has now spread out on the national political scene and would poll and estimated 8.1 percent of the vote, not only eating into the PP vote, but also UPyD, with whom they share much of their ideology.

Friday's Cadena Ser poll showed Podemos to attract 27.5 percent of the vote, with the PP on 24.6 percent and the PSOE on 19 percent, while a poll published in the right wing La Razon newspaper gave the PP a narrow lead ahead of the POSE and Podemos. Endit