PP stretches general election lead as far-left loses hope generated by Sumar in April
Vox and Abascal are absolutely stuck on 15%. The Socialist Party is not winning, but they haven't gone into a spiral of collapse either.
I wasn’t going to write anything this morning but I sat down for a minute to look at the polls and this came out, which is useful for you. This is the polls in Spain for the last year and a half with a 20-day, two standard deviation band. It smooths out the individual poll differences and illustrates when a particular shift is more relevant (the channel gets wider for that party).
On the right, the major shift was last year when the PP (blue) suddenly got rid of Pablo Casado and appointed Feijóo. Why did they do that? Becuase Vox (green) was gaining ground and starting to overtake them. The PP then established itself firmly above the 30% in the following months and sent Vox back down to poll purgatory at a flat 15%, where Abascal’s party has remained ever since.
Between last summer and Easter, the lines were flat for all parties.
The Socialist Party (red) bobs up and down a bit but has stuck around the 25% level all the way. Not enough to win, but not terrible, not collapse.
On the left, the major event over the past 18 months was the appearance of Yolanda Díaz’s new far-left party Sumar (pink) at the beginning of April. That line shows the Podemos number for most of the graph, the number for Podemos and Sumar together in April and May, and is now just Sumar.
After the local and regional elections on May 28, you can clearly see two relevant new shifts: a new rise for Feijóo’s PP (blue) and also a sudden collapse of the far-left vote. Sumar generated hope but then Podemos destroyed it with terrible results at the ballot box, and then the two parties bickered over names for the general election lists.
There’s a bit of a nudge upwards for Sánchez (red) and a bit of a nudge down for Abascal (green) but neither is particulary relevant compared to where they were.
This graph picks up the relationship between actual major political events in Spain and voter preferences nicely. What will happen to these lines over the next four weeks in the run up to the general election? What will Spanish politics look like in August? Can Feijóo keep his blue line going up or will the regional confusion with Vox disappoint voters on the right? Can Yolanda Díaz and Sumar revive the hopes of voters on the far-left after the disappointment of the May elections for Podemos?
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