Spain’s right-wing bloc has surpassed 50% support among voters in a poll taken a month after the start of the Ceuta migrant crisis.
The September 40dB barometer for El Pais and Cadena SER found the Partido Popular (PP) and hard-right Vox would together secure 50.2% of the vote if a general election were held today.
It is the first time the two parties have crossed the 50% threshold in the poll’s historical series.
The survey was conducted between August 31 and September 2, exactly a month after the mass arrival of migrants into Ceuta which has dominated Spain’s political debate in recent weeks.
However, unlike another recent poll showing a dramatic surge for Vox, the 40dB study suggests the crisis has not yet fundamentally reshaped voting intentions.
The PP would remain comfortably in first place on 32.4%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points compared with the previous poll.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s PSOE would take 27.6%, down by the same amount, leaving Alberto Nuñez Feijoo’s PP 4.8 points ahead.
However, Vox still recorded the largest increase of the major parties.
Santiago Abascal’s party climbed 0.6 points to 17.8%, reversing four consecutive months of decline.
It nevertheless remains below the 18.8% peak recorded by 40dB in March.
There is also evidence of movement from the PP towards Vox.
The proportion of Vox’s support coming from people who voted for Feijoo’s PP at the 2023 general election increased by 0.8 percentage points compared with the previous survey.
Right passes 50% milestone
While the month-to-month movements are relatively modest, their cumulative effect produces a significant milestone.
The combined PP and Vox vote reaches 50.2%.
By comparison, PSOE and Sumar together attract just 33.3%, putting the two main parties of the left almost 17 points behind their counterparts on the right.
That comparison does not include nationalist and regional parties, several of which backed Sanchez’s investiture following the 2023 general election.
The picture is particularly bleak for Spain’s smaller left-wing parties.
Sumar slipped another 0.1 points, while Podemos fell 0.3 points and failed to reach the 3% threshold cited by the poll for representation in a future Congress.
PSOE itself is now four percentage points below the share of the vote it secured at the 2023 general election.
Different picture for Vox
The results come after another recent poll suggested Vox had enjoyed a much more dramatic boost following the Ceuta crisis.
A More in Common survey conducted between August 24 and 28 put Abascal’s party on 20.3%, up 3.2 points from its previous study.
That poll also found a sharp rise in concern about immigration, with 45.9% of respondents identifying it as one of Spain’s three biggest problems.
The new 40dB poll therefore offers a more cautious picture of the electoral impact of Ceuta.
While Vox is gaining and the combined right has reached a new high, the survey’s authors conclude that the mass migrant arrivals and subsequent political battle have not yet produced a major realignment of Spain’s electoral landscape.
Fieldwork was completed on September 2, before Sanchez’s appearance before Congress and before the subsequent controversy surrounding police reports into the events in Ceuta.
The political fallout from the crisis has continued since then, with senior PP regional presidents on Monday rejecting the redistribution of migrant minors from Ceuta.
