New poll puts Spanish socialists in lead

A poll carried out by Metroscope for the El Pais newspaper in Spain on Monday gave the Spanish Socialist (PSOE) party a narrow lead over the ruling Popular Party (PP) while continuing to show a hung parliament is the most likely conclusion of the forthcoming general election in Spain.

The poll showed the Socialists (PSOE) who are led by Pedro Sanchez, moving to 24.6 percent of the vote, 1.1 percent higher than a month ago.

Meanwhile, the PP sees its support also rise, by 0.3 percent to 23.1 percent in August. The PP vote has recovered slightly since a low of 18.6 percent in March, but it is still over 20 points behind the 44 percent by the current ruling party in the November 2011 elections and has not really improved despite their firm opposition to Catalan independence.

An interesting factor of the September poll is that the two recently created "populist" parties, "Podemos" and "Ciudadanos" (Citizens) have also picked up after their support had appeared to drift in recent months.

Support for Podemos climbed by 0.5 percent to 18.6 percent, which although well behind their February high of 28 percent, shows the party has begun to show itself able to govern, as it is now doing in many local authorities.

Meanwhile, Ciudadanos stand on 16.1 percent with much of their support coming from the center-right UPyD, who have virtually ceased to exist as a relevant political force and now count on the vote of just 0.8 percent of citizens.

Finally, the United Left continues to hover around the 5 percent mark.

The interesting factor is that support for all four of the main parties increased, due to a fall in the number of people who said they are undecided or who will leave a blank ballot paper in the general election.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will be counting on many of those to vote for his party in December, but September's results show they could be more included to vote PSOE and the possibility of a center-left coalition for Spain is now looking possible. Endit