Kennedy, P. (2014) “Opinion polling leaves little doubt Podemos could break into the mainstream of Spanish politics at next year’s general election“, LSE EUROPP, 12 November.
Recent opinion polls in Spain have indicated that the left-wing Podemos (‘We Can’) party, which was only formed in January of this year, could gain the largest share of the vote in Spain’s 2015 general election. Paul Kennedy assesses the challenge the party poses to Spain’s traditional two-party system. He writes that a key indicator as to whether Podemos can translate its opinion polling numbers into actual support will be how it fares in upcoming regional and local elections in May.
The threat posed by Podemos (We Can) to Spain’s two-party system remains in place six months after the new political force obtained over 2.25 million votes and five seats at the European Parliamentary elections. An opinion poll carried out for El País at the start of November indicated that the movement led by Pablo Iglesias would, in the event of a general election, obtain greater public support than both the governing People’s Party (PP) and the chief opposition party, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).
Podemos accounted for 27 per cent, 1.5 per cent more than the PSOE and 7 per cent more than the PP. A further poll published the same week by the Sociological Research Centre (CIS), which carries out quarterly surveys for the Spanish government, nevertheless indicated that the PP remained in the lead (on 27.5 percent), ahead of the PSOE (23.9 per cent) and Podemos (22.5 per cent). The Chart below shows the predicted vote share (as calculated by CIS) for Spanish political parties since the beginning of 2013, alongside the growth in support for Podemos over recent months since the European Parliament elections in May.
Chart: Predicted support for Spanish political parties/alliances in the 2015 Spanish general election (2013-14)
Relevant posts:
- Flesher Fominaya, C. (2014) ““Spain is Different”: Podemos and 15-M“, LSE EUROPP, 04 June.
- Hugh, E. (2014) “Spain and the IMF: Round the Bend or Out of the Woods?“, A Fistful of Euros-European Opinion Blog, 15 July.
- De Grauwe, P. (2014) “Revisiting the pain in Spain“, VoxEU Organisation, 07 July.