Poll continues to point to hung parliament in Spanish general election

The latest opinion poll published in Spain on Sunday continued to point to a hung parliament at the forthcoming general election.

With just over two months to the general election, which is scheduled to be held on Dec. 20, the Metroscope poll published in Sunday's edition of the El-Pais newspaper showed that the ruling Popular Party (PP) and the opposition Socialist Party (PSOE) are still struggling to deal with the new political climate created by the rise of the so-called "populist" parties, the center-right Citizens (Ciudadanos) and the left-wing Podemos.

The October polls placed the PSOE and PP within 0.1 percent of each other, but with the PSOE currently attracting just 23.5 percent of voters and the PP 23.4 percent, neither can be happy.

The PP currently stand just over 21 percent down on their showing in the November 2011 general election which they won 44.6 percent of the votes, while the PSOE have slipped 1.2 percent since September and are still below the 28.7 percent they won four years ago in their worst ever general election performance.

The poll was carried out on Oct. 7-8 and the effects of the Catalan Regional elections are clear to see.

Citizens, which performed well in the Catalan vote on Sept. 27, finishing second to the pro-independence Junt's Pel Si, have now carried their support onto the national stage and the party led by Albert Rivera now counts on 21.5 percent of support, after slipping to just 13 percent in June.

Citizens are now a serious challenge to both the PP and PSOE and stand to be in a strong negotiating position to form a coalition government after December.

Meanwhile, poll last week showing voter satisfaction with the Podemos led town halls in Madrid and Barcelona, Pablo Iglesias' party has slipped 4.5 percent in the polls in just over a month, perhaps of a result of their inability to form a pact with the United Left (IU), whose support stands at 5.6 percent. Endit