Elections in Spain: Pollsters Underestimate Conservative Support

Source: www.inquisitr.com - Sunday, June 26, 2016
Surprising pollsters, Spain’s conservative Popular Party (PP), also called the People’s Party by some news agencies, won today’s general election in that country, but has still fallen short of a parliamentary majority. It remains to be seen if the PP victory can break the ongoing political deadlock in Spain, which is Europe’s fourth-largest economy. The center-right PP under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy won 137 seats, up from 123 in the inconclusive December election, while the socialist PSOE finished in second place with 85 seats (down from 90). The PP needed 176 seats to control the 350-member parliament. “We have won the elections, we demand the right to govern,” Rajoy declared in a victory rally in Madrid tonight. Now Rajoy will be faced with the difficult task of forming a coalition government to once again avoid a hung parliament. “Spain’s electorate, angry about high unemployment and corruption, has expressed little appetite for a third round of voting. So most analysts are betting that a government will be formed, even though it could take painstaking negotiations and perhaps party leadership change,” the Wall Street Journal reported . Pollsters predicted that the PP would lose seats and that Rajoy would be out of job and that the new far-left, anti-austerity Unidos Podemos party would gain significant traction. In a disappointment to its supporters, Unidos Podemos wound up with the same number of seats, 71, as in Decembe

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