Election 20D

Spaniards don’t want new election despite stalemate

Rajoy failed to secure a majority despite winning the general election. | Juan Medina

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterMadrid02/01/2016 00:00

Less than one third of Spaniards want a re-run of the general election, which resulted in a stalemate. A poll shows that two-thirds favour a pact between parties, while just seven per cent said they would change their votes in a fresh election and 87.1 per cent said they would vote the same way. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular (PP) won the most votes at the election but lost its parliamentary majority. The opposition socialists (PSOE) were in second place, but both lost ground to newcomers, the liberal Ciudadanos and left-wing Podemos.

Only 1.4 per cent of PP supporters would change their vote in a new election while 6.8 per cent of those who backed the PSOE would vote for a different party. As to prime minister, 27 per cent said they would prefer to see Rajoy remain while 26 per cent said Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias should replace him.

The poll of 1,200 people was carried out by Invymark for the television channel La Sexta.

In his traditional Christmas address to the nation, King Felipe had called for tolerance of political diversity. The monarch, whose approval ratings are far higher than any politician’s, warned of the dangers of one group imposing its ideas on others.
“(This) has only led us historically to decadence, impoverishment and isolation. This is an error of our past which we must not commit again,“ he said, in an apparent reference to Spain’s 1939-1975 Francoist dictatorship. King Felipe called for economic growth which provides “dignified work ... and allows inequalities, accentuated by the depth of the economic crisis, to be reduced”.