Poll: Spanish PM's People's Party would win election if held now

The right-wing People's Party (PP) of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy would win a general election if one were to be held now in Spain, according to an opinion poll published on Tuesday.

The quarterly poll, carried out by the Spanish Center for Sociological Investigations (CIS), shows the PP would gain 31.5 percent of the vote, while the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) would take 19.9 percent of the vote, despite not currently having a leader.

The left-wing Podemos party would come third in an election with 19.7 percent of votes and the center-right Ciudadanos party would take 14.9 percent of votes.

The poll confirms that the PP has lost support in relation to the 33 percent they claimed in the June 26 general election last year, while despite the ongoing campaign to elect a new leader for the PSOE, the party has climbed one percent since the last CIS poll carried out in January.

Podemos has lost support, while Ciudadanos have claimed the votes which have slipped away from the PP, whose leader, Mariano Rajoy, has an approval rating of just 2.91, the lowest of all of the party leaders.

However, the results of the poll have to be seen in the context of the time the CIS carried out its survey. The organization questioned 2,500 people between April 1 and 8, just after the PP president of the Murcia region, Pedro Antonio Sanchez, was forced to resign due to his implication in the Punica corruption scandal.

However, the poll was carried out before the revelations of Operation Lezo which have seen former PP president of Madrid Ignacio Gonzalez imprisoned and his predecessor Esperanza Aguirre resign as president of the PP in the Madrid region, amid further revelations of widespread corruption in the party.

It also took place before Susana Diaz, the leader of the PSOE in the region of Andalusia, announced her candidacy for the party leadership alongside Patxi Lopez and former leader Pedro Sanchez. Endit