MADRID — Spain's official campaign for its November 29 snap election opened at midnight on Friday, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez struggling to rally a disillusioned left behind his Socialist party, according to a Reuters analysis published on Friday.
When Sánchez called the snap election last month, he was betting that anger over housing and fear of the far right would rally all shades of the left behind his Socialists. But interviews and polls suggest many potential supporters are too furious about the status quo — and the perceived failings of his own incumbent government — to oblige.
For all his campaigning, polls show backing for his party still hovering around the 26%-29% level recorded before he called the election. Without a shift in the next two weeks, an alliance between the conservative People's Party and the far-right Vox — a hardline nationalist party championing tighter borders and deregulation — is seen as the most likely next government.
The picture is muddied by a sharp split between pollsters. Spain's state pollster, the CIS, gives the Socialists 33.3% of the vote, ahead of the People's Party on 25.5% and Vox on 18.4%, in the largest survey it has ever carried out for a general election — 45,074 telephone interviews between October 7 and 30. Private polls tell a very different story: the median of recent surveys gives the People's Party 31.3% and the Socialists 26.5%.
Housing is the issue that has defined the campaign. The eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal in September, and her subsequent death, triggered protests against a housing crisis that culminated in a general strike on Wednesday which unions said brought more than 3 million people on to the streets.
"Every generation has its own struggle — for us, that struggle is housing," Sánchez said at his first rally after calling the vote. Two deadly train crashes, corruption convictions in Sánchez's inner circle and a rush of migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta have also taken their toll on his support.
On the trail, Sánchez has deployed the roulette-table phrase "all on red" to appeal for tactical votes for his party in provinces with just a handful of seats, where Spain's electoral system disadvantages smaller parties. With more than a million voters still undecided, his former campaign strategist Iván Redondo told reporters that four in five left-leaning Spaniards backing the Socialists in small provinces could turn things around.
The left's fragmentation is working against him. Podemos, which at its height in 2015 attracted over a quarter of voters, has dropped to 1.9% in most recent polls and has refused to join the new "Broad Front" or consider an alliance with the incumbents. Vox, meanwhile, is attracting some disillusioned left-wing voters with its narratives of defending hard work and protecting Spanish culture, pollster Paco Camas of Ipsos said.
Sánchez secured a narrow parliamentary victory on Thursday, winning a package of tenant protections by 35 votes to 34 in Congress's Permanent Deputation. He and People's Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo are due to debate on Monday, November 16.
