Socialist party moves into lead in latest Spanish opinion poll

The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) continues its slow recovery in the opinion polls, according to the Metroscope poll published in the Spanish El Pais newspaper on Sunday.

In the poll published just four months ahead of the next general election, the party led by Pedro Sanchez stands on 23.5 percent of the voting intention, continuing a steady increase in support after bottoming out at an all-time low of 18.3 percent of February this year.

The ruling Popular Party (PP) continues to receive bad news and the party led by Mariano Rajoy now counts on just 23.1 percent, 0.1 percent up on June's voting intentions, but below the 44 percent of the vote they won in the 2011 general elections and the 27 percent support they won in the May 24 local and regional elections.

That implies that Rajoy's attempts to revamp the party in the wake of the May poll has failed to find favor with voters, just four months ahead of the next general election.

The so-called "populist" parties Podemos and Citizens (Ciudadanos) have both seen their support slide away as with Podemos seeing support drop from 21.5 percent to 18.1 percent over the last month, while Citizens stand on 16 percent, one percent up on last month, but 3.4 percent down on their April showing.

Meanwhile the United Left (IU) has made a slight recovery moving up to 5.4 percent, despite, or perhaps because of, their refusal to pact with the ideologically similar Podemos.

As for valuation of Spain's leaders, Citizens' leader Albert Rivera is the only leader with a positive rating, while Prime Minister Rajoy has disastrous rating of minus 48, the worst of any of the main party leaders. Endit