The scandal-ridden Socialist-led government in Spain would fall to a bloc of the centre-right People’s Party and VOX populists if an election were held now, a survey has found.
The “smell of political change” is in the air of the corridors of power in Madrid, Spain’s ABC newspaper remarked upon the release of the latest polling from GAD3, which predicted that the coalition government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appears on course to lose power as its support continues to falter amid mounting scandals surrounding the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).
According to the survey, the Sánchista party would win just 107 seats in the parliament if an election were held today, far below the 176 needed for a majority and down from the 121 won by the leftist party during the last elections held in 2023.
Meanwhile, the centre-right People’s Party (PP) of Alberto Núñez Feijóo is projected to remain the largest party with 141 MPs, up from 137 it won three years ago. However, the most significant shift was in favour of Santiago Abascal’s anti-mass migration VOX party, which is projected to nearly double its presence in the parliament, jumping from 33 to 60 seats.
Together, this would give the two right-wing parties a majority of 201, which would almost certainly be able to prevent Prime Minister Sánchez from forming another minority government with the support of far-left and separatist parties, as he did in 2023 after his Socialists came in second behind the PP.
Yet this would still depend on Feijóo and Abascal putting aside their differences. While the PP and VOX have entered into power-sharing agreements at the regional level, the two parties have never cooperated at the national level.
Although Feijóo has said that VOX is a “more radical right-wing” party than his own, he has refused to enact a so-called cordon sanitaire firewall, as other establishment centre-right parties have done in Europe against populist parties, such as the AfD in Germany.
Nevertheless, the PP leader has consistently said he would prefer to govern without VOX’s support. On the other hand, Abascal has been a vocal critic of Feijóo, whom he has variously described as feckless in the face of the Socialists and weak on opposing issues such as immigration and the green agenda.
Winning does tend to smooth over such differences; however, it is also possible that Feijóo may seek to mimic Sánchez and form a minority government with the support of right-wing separatist parties, such as the pro-Catalan independence Junts party.
Regardless, the survey is another blow to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose Socialist Workers’ Party has become embroiled in multiple scandals over the past month, starting with his predecessor and party grandee José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero facing charges of influence peddling and money laundering — allegedly in the millions of euros — as police discovered hundreds of thousands in jewellery and cash in the possession of the former PM and his close allies.
To make matters worse, a specialist police unit raided the Socialist party’s headquarters in Madrid last week amid accusations that the governing party was seeking to stymie judicial actions against the party. This comes on top of accusations that Prime Minsiter Sanchez’s wife also used her position to obtain favourable government contracts for her associates.
The government has also come under heavy criticism for its decision to unilaterally bypass the legislature and offer amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants living in the country, despite a majority of voters viewing illegal immigration as the top threat facing the nation.
The Sánchez government is also embattled abroad, with the leftist administration facing the prospect of punishment from the United States over Madrid’s move to bar American military assets from using their bases during the conflict with Iran, for which it has been suggested by the White House that Spain could be kicked out of the NATO alliance. The leftist government in Madrid is also facing potential EU sanctions over claims that it embezzled coronavirus lockdown subsidies to fund its national welfare schemes.