Roundup: Confusing polls show Spanish election in the balance

With just a week to go before the June 26 Spanish general election, the results are once again too close to call following a confusing set of opinion polls published in the Spanish media on Sunday.

Polls in the El Pais, ABC, El Mundo and El Espanol newspapers give conflicting findings which range from seeing the ruling right wing Peoples Party increase their share of the vote to left wing Unidos Podemos and the center-left Socialist Party (PSOE) winning enough seats in the Spanish Congress to give them a majority should they decide to form a coalition government.

The poll in the El Espanol online newspaper gives Mariano Rajoy's PP 125 seats -- a slight improvement on the 123 they won in the December 2015 election. El Mundo believes Rajoy's party will win between 124 and 129 seats, while ABC's poll predicts the PP will have between 121 and 124 representatives in Congress.

All of these polls expect Unidos Podemos to make important gains on the 69 seats Podemos won in December last year, with ACB predicting them to take 84 or 85 seats in the 350 seat Congress.

That would see the formation led by Pablo Iglesias overtake the PSOE to become Spain's second political force. The PSOE are predicted to lose anywhere between 7-17 seats by the three papers, while the vote for the center-right formation Citizens can expect minor losses.

These results contrast sharply with the Metroscope poll published in El Pais which predicts the PP will lose up to 10 seats, while Unidos Podemos takes between 92-95 and the PSOE 78-85.

If the two parties poll in the upper range of the El Pais prediction they would reach between them the "magic" number of 176 seats needed for a majority in Congress, offering the possibility of a "progressive" government both Iglesias and PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez have spoken about before and during the campaign.

Nevertheless, difficult negotiations would lie ahead as the PSOE are upset Iglesias refused to support Sanchez's attempt to become Prime Minister in March and many Socialists believe that becoming the junior partner in Unidos Podemos led government could do irreparable damage to a party which seems to be heading for its worst ever election result.

One thing that is clear, however, is that Spain remains a politically divided nation as 53 percent of respondents in El Pais insisting they would "never" vote for the PP, while 47 percent said the same of Unidos Podemos. Endit