Thursday, March 06, 2008

Spanish General Election 2008....The Last Opinion Polls

Publication of opinion polls is not permitted during the last week of the election campaign in Spain. For this reason the last estimations on the outcome of the elections are those of the Sunday prior to election day itself, meaning they are a week out of date by the time voters go to the polling stations. It was perhaps inevitable that someone would eventually find a way round this restriction, and so it turns out with a poll that has been published by El Periodico today. That would be El Periodico de Catalunya would it? Well almost, but not quite. It turns out that El Periodico has an Andorran edition, and Andorra not being part of Spain they are able to print the results of an opinion poll!

What their poll shows today is an advantage of 3.4% in favour of the governing PSOE, nothing too far out of line with the polls published last weekend. More worrying for the PSOE will be the relatively low participation estimate, which the poll puts at 68%. However, the political parties will almost certainly have their own internal polls to give them an idea of what is happening in the final days. This poll in El Periodico was conducted after Monday's final electoral debate and shows no real influence from that debate on voting intentions. Residents of Andorra will be treated to a further tracking poll tomorrow on the elections in their larger neighbour to the south.

Updated: Here is a new phenomenon, I've just seen that the Times has commissioned a poll yesterday on the Spanish elections (it gives Zapatero a lead of 3.8%). This is the first case I can remember of a British newspaper commissioning its own opinion poll on a European election. This poll puts the estimated participation at 74-76% which is good news for the left if it turns out that way. Here is the powerpoint presentation of the results - it's written in Spanglish.



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