Spain's conservative People's Party, the PP, would win 136 seats if the general election were held now, according to a GAD3 poll for the newspaper ABC published on Monday 9 November, keeping the right-wing bloc on course for an absolute majority three weeks before voters go to the polls.

The poll puts the PP on 31.9 per cent of the vote, the governing Socialists, the PSOE, on 25.9 per cent and 103 seats, and the far-right Vox party on 18.6 per cent and 63 seats. Together, the PP, its Navarre ally UPN and Vox would hold 199 seats, 23 more than the 176 needed for an absolute majority in the 350-seat Congress of Deputies.

The survey was carried out between 3 and 5 November, after the Urda train accident and coinciding with the resignation of transport minister Oscar Puente. It is the latest snapshot of a short, crowded campaign ahead of the general election on 29 November, called by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez after his government lost a parliamentary vote on its housing relief plans.

A small shift since October

Compared with GAD3's October barometer, the PP has gained three seats and the PSOE has lost four, according to the report of the poll. Vox has lost representation despite increasing its vote share, a reminder that Spain's seat allocation can move differently from the national vote.

The figures leave the broad shape of the race unchanged. The PP remains clearly ahead, the PSOE remains in second place, and the combined right-wing tally remains above the majority line, as it has been in recent polling. What has changed is the margin: the PP's lead over the PSOE has widened slightly, while Vox has slipped back in seats.

Other polls published on the same day tell a similar story in outline but differ on the numbers, which is normal when different institutes use different methods and samples. A 40dB poll for El Pais and Cadena SER, also published on 9 November, put the PP on 129 seats, the PSOE on 119 and Vox on 61, with the PP and Vox together on 190 seats. Polls are snapshots with a margin of error, not predictions of the result.

An aggregate of recent polls compiled by PolitPro, covering surveys up to 8 November, also had the PP in front, on 29.8 per cent, ahead of the PSOE on 26.9 per cent and Vox on 18.7 per cent. On that average, the governing PSOE and Sumar alliance would hold only 41.1 per cent of the seats, too few for a majority of its own.

Housing dominates voters' concerns

The same GAD3 barometer asked Spaniards what worried them most, and housing dominated the answers. Fifty-five per cent of those surveyed named housing as one of the two main problems facing Spain, compared with 27 per cent who pointed to the economy and 22 per cent who pointed to polarisation.

Housing has been central to the campaign since the autumn, when large protests over rents and house prices took place across Spain, and it was the issue at the heart of the parliamentary defeat that led Sanchez to dissolve parliament and call the election for 29 November.

The GAD3 findings suggest the housing debate has not hurt the PP's standing. If anything, the party has consolidated its lead since October, while the PSOE has slipped, even though the election was called on the government's own terms after its housing plans were voted down by the PP, Vox and Junts.

What happens next

With 20 days to go until polling day, the arithmetic points to a right-wing government if the polls are right, but the seat projections leave little room for error. The PP and Vox together are above the majority line in both the GAD3 and 40dB polls, yet the two surveys disagree by ten seats on the PP's own tally, and a shift of a few seats in either direction could change the shape of any coalition talks.

The PSOE's position is also uncertain. Its vote share has held up better than its seat count in some surveys, and the 40dB poll puts it much closer to the PP than GAD3 does. Whether that reflects a genuine narrowing of the race or simply the difference between two polling methods will only become clear as more surveys are published in the final weeks.

For now, the GAD3 poll gives the PP a clear lead and the right a workable majority. The campaign still has three weeks to run, and the Urda accident, the resignation of a senior minister and the housing protests have already shown how quickly the context can change.