Spain votes this Sunday in legislative elections with the latest polls giving the victory of the right and the defeat of the current president of the Government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez.
These are the 16th general elections in Spain since the end of the dictatorship, in 1977, and 37,469,142 voters are called to vote, to elect 350 deputies and 208 senators.
The elections were scheduled for December, at the end of the legislature, but Sánchez brought them forward after the defeat of the left in the municipal and regional elections on May 28.
There are dozens of candidate lists, many from regional and local parties, reflecting the diversity of Spain.
However, only four parties presented national lists and intend to reach the Government: Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), Popular Party (PP, right), Somar (extreme left) and VOX (extreme right).
The current government is a coalition of the PSOE with the extreme left platform United We Can, made up of parties that have now joined a new ‘brand’, Somar, which integrates 15 formations and is considered the largest left-wing alliance that has ever existed in Spain.
Spanish law prohibits the publication of polls in the five days prior to the elections, so the latest known studies are from Monday.
All the polls published that day confirmed, with a single exception in dozens of studies, the victory of the PP and placed the group of the right and the extreme right on the verge of an absolute majority.
The latest polls gave the victory to the PP, but without an absolute majority, they placed the PSOE as the second most voted force, but they were divided in relation to third place, which could fall to VOX or Somar.
The polls also agreed that VOX will have fewer deputies this year than the 52 it won in the previous elections, in 2019, but the result of the far-right could now be decisive, if it has the possibility of forming an absolute majority in Parliament with the PP bench and, thus, getting into the Government or avoiding a ‘contrivance’ between left-wing and regional parties.
The alliances between PP and PSOE to reach or stay in power were the theme that dominated the electoral campaign.
The left has made the threat of the entry of the extreme right into the Government of Spain, allied with the PP, as is the case with three regional executives, the central message of its campaign, considering that there is a risk of setbacks in rights and freedoms and in environmental policies.
PP and VOX have highlighted the coalition of the Socialists, in the last legislature, with the extreme left, which they refer to as “the communists”, and the parliamentary agreements with the pro-independence parties of Catalonia and the Basque Country, in what they consider a threat to the integrity of Spain.
Source: TSF
