After last month's general election, centre-left PSOE is now set to win the European Parliament election in Spain on 26th May, according to a survey published today by CIS (Spanish "Centre for Sociological Research"). The results also find that both exiled former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and his imprisoned vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, will win seats as MEPs for their respective parties..
Specifically, CIS predicts PSOE will get 17 or 18 of Spain's 54 seats with between 29 and 31% of the vote. PP would come second with 18-20% of the vote for 11-12 seats. For European Parliament elections, Spain is taken as a single, multi-member constituency with seats allocated based on a version of proportional representation.
The top five would continue along the lines of the general election, with Cs (8-9 seats), Podemos (8) and rounded out by far-right Vox jumping to 4-5 seats. Registered as a party in 2013, Vox has only competed in one previous European election, in 2014, when they won no seats. They had had an MEP, however, in Alejo Vidal-Quadras who had switched to them from the PP earlier that year, before losing his re-election bid.
Puigdemont and Junqueras, MEPs
The survey also gives seats to Oriol Junqueras and Carles Puigdemont, after the challenges to the latter's candidacy failed. Ara Repúbliques, the list including Junqueras' ERC, would get three MEPs, whilst Puigdemont's JxCat would get one. As the respective heads of their lists of candidates, the two former government partners would therefore be elected.
The other party predicted to gain a seat is CEUS, which includes Basque pro-independence party EAJ. Once again, animal-rights party PACMA is expected to fall short of the threshold for representation in the chamber.