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New election would lead to lower voter turnout in Spain: poll

Xinhua, April 11, 2016 Adjust font size:

A new general election in Spain would lead to a fall in voter turnout, which would favor the ruling Peoples' Party (PP), according to a survey published in the English language version of the El Pais newspaper on Monday.

The survey, carried out by the polling firm Metroscope, shows that a fresh election could see voter turnout fall from the 73.18 percent who voted in the inconclusive general election on Dec. 20, 2015, to around 69 percent.

Speaking to the newspaper, Angel Valencia, a professor of political science at Malaga University, explained that on the one hand, there is "weariness" among voters following the year 2015, during which a general election and local and regional elections were held, as well as a political debate that lasted for months.

He also commented that traditionally, "abstention hits the left harder and the current fragmentation of the left (between Socialists, United Left and Podemos), which added to its failure to form a government, is favoring this trend."

The Metroscope poll shows a lower turnout would favor the PP and perhaps Citizens, because their supporters would be more willing to go out to the polling stations and those parties could win more seats in a new election without actually winning more votes than in December.

The high-level of voter loyalty for the PP has been shown in the past three months as the party has maintained its share of the vote despite being implicated in major corruption scandals in both Valencia and Madrid.

Meanwhile Podemos could be the party to most suffer in a new vote because the new party had no time to garner support from a group of people who would traditionally vote for it and as a result its voter loyalty is "the lowest of the four main parties," according to Metroscope's Jose Pablo Ferrandiz.

Spain faces the possibility of new elections on June 26 unless parties can agree on a coalition government by May 2, something which looks increasingly unlikely after the failure of three-way talks between the Socialists, center-right Citizens and left wing Podemos last week. Endit