It's neck-and-neck between ERC, PSC and JxCat in Catalonia at the start of campaigning for this month's European Parliament election. That's according to a survey from the CEO (Catalan Centre for Opinion Studies) published this Friday.
ERC are estimated to be set to win 22.5% of the vote, PSC, 22.2%, and JxCat, 21.2%. At the moment, 32.1% of respondents are undecided about who to vote for. The results also show that 59.9% of those surveyed evaluate the European Parliament's work positively.
One interesting detail is that almost a quarter of those who voted for ERC in last month's general election are planning to vote for Puigdemont's JxCat on the 26th instead. In terms of stated voting intention, ERC leads with 16.7%, PSC is on 12.1% and JxCat 11.1%, barely half the result the agency believes they will get in the end.
The issues
71.3% of those surveyed say they will definitely vote in the election; turnout in 2014 in Spain as a whole was 43.8%. Only 5.2% say that the most important consideration for them will be "topics related to the European Union and the European Parliament" whilst 32.0% say it will be "topics related to the political situation [in Spain and Catalonia]". 58.9% say the two categories are of equal importance for them.
The fieldwork for the survey was carried out just after the April general election and whilst the block on Puigdemont standing as a candidate from the Central Electoral Commission was still in place.