Opinion poll results in full (pdf)

The Spanish Prime Minister is set to clinch re-election on Sunday by a narrow margin, according to the results of a poll commissioned by The Times.

The survey, conducted by the Spanish polling company Sigma Dos, shows José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialist Party beating its conservative rivals by 3.8 percentage points. That result would give the Socialists enough seats in Parliament to form a government but place them short of an absolute majority.

Spanish media are barred from publishing opinion polls in the five days leading up to the election but political parties and business groups continue to commission them. The results are traded widely among political and business elites but until now have been kept from ordinary Spaniards.

Now several Spanish media outlets, including the newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya, are campaigning for an end to the obsolete law, introduced in the 1980s with the argument that they could influence voters. “The ban on publishing polls is a clear limitation on freedom of expression, unworthy of a solid democracy such as ours,” the newspaper said. It has decided to publish its own polls from a website in Andorra, just beyond Spain’s borders, giving the Socialists a 3.4 point lead.

The Times poll was conducted on Wednesday, after the second of two ill-tempered television debates between the Prime Minister and Mariano Rajoy, of the right-wing Popular Party. In four hours of heated debate that drew record audiences, they clashed over the economy, immigration and anti-terrorism policy.

For the past four years Mr Rajoy has excoriated the Spanish leader for his ill-fated efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the violent Basque separatist group Eta, accusing him of “surrendering to terrorists”. The theme has played well with the Popular Party’s supporters but failed to win over enough converts to win the election.

So Mr Rajoy has changed tack, focusing on Spain’s stalling growth, rising prices and, above all, immigration. The Times poll suggests that at least one of Mr Rajoy’s key proposals — to force immigrants to sign a contract stating that they will abide by Spanish laws and customs — has connected with voters, with 62 per cent of respondents saying that they would support such a proposal while 26.4 per cent rejected it.

The Spanish Government has criticised Mr Rajoy’s plan as xenophobic and redundant. Immigrants must already abide by Spanish law, they point out, and even those born in the country would have a hard time agreeing what “Spanish customs” are. In private though, Socialist Party officials worry that the high rate of immigration in the past few years could cost it votes on Sunday. Spain’s once-dwindling population has jumped from 40 million to 45 million since 2000, boosting the economy but creating tensions in working-class, urban areas, where many immigrants have settled.

The economy is another source of worry for strategists. Unemployment figures showed that 53,000 Spaniards lost their jobs in February, taking the unemployment rate to 8.6 per cent. The manufacturing sector is also at its weakest in more than six years.

Mr Zapatero swept to power unexpectedly four years ago on a wave of public anger over the previous Government’s handling of the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800. The conservative Government of José María Aznar tried to pin the outrage on Eta despite mounting evidence that it was the work of Islamic radicals. Analysts say it was punished by voters who would not normally have gone to the polls.

This time the challenge for the Socialists has been to motivate those voters to support it again at the polls.

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