Spain faces hung parliament: polls

Bloomberg

Spanish newspaper opinion polls signalled a potential deadlock from elections to be held on April 28, with neither alliances from the left nor right wings of the political scene certain to be able to build a parliamentary majority.
A survey published by El Pais newspaper showed the Socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on course to win 129 seats in the 350-seat parliament.
Adding a 33 possible seats from potential allies Podemos and three from Compromis would give 165 seats, short of the 176 needed for a majority.
A poll in El Mundo newspaper showed that the Socialists and Podemos could win between 152 and 174 seats. An alliance on the right led by the People’s Party and including Ciudadanos and the Spanish nationalist party Vox could win between 142 and 174 seats, the poll showed.
While the polls point to the Socialists becoming the biggest party in parliament, the final outcome looks impossible to predict as the election campaign goes into its final week. Party leaders are due to participate in two televised debates on April 22 and April 23, adding another element of uncertainty to the contest.

Undecided Voters
According to the El Pais poll, about 27 percent of those surveyed still couldn’t say which way they would vote. In such an uncertain scenario, the role of small parties such as the Basque nationalists, set to win six seats according to the El Mundo poll, could also be key.
“The Spanish want the Socialist party to keep governing the country,” Sanchez said in an interview with Barcelona’s La Vanguardia newspaper published on Sunday. “I have that intuition.”
Another poll published by Voz de Galicia newspaper echoed the other surveys. The Socialists would win 137 seats, rising to 170 seats including Podemos, according
to the poll by Sondaxe. The three-way right-wing alliance would have 149 seats.