The PSC would win the Spanish and Catalan elections with ERC and Aliança disputing second place

BarcelonaThe PSC would win the Spanish elections again just as it did in 2023, with an incontestable victory like the one it achieved three years ago. This is the forecast made by the Center for Opinion Studies (CEO) a month and a half before the elections. Salvador Illa's party would also win the Catalan elections, but with a narrower margin than in 2024, with ERC and Aliança Catalana fighting for second place. This is what can be inferred from the second barometer of 2026, which was presented this Wednesday with a survey conducted between September 1st and October 5th, just the day before Pedro Sánchez called early elections.

In Congress, the candidacy led by the minister and former mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, would be the winner of the elections, reaffirming the victory that Meritxell Batet had already achieved. The socialists would revalidate the 19 deputies from 2023, nine more than the second political force. Gabriel Rufián's ERC would rise to second place with a range between 10 and 11 seats (they currently have 7), to the detriment of the Comuns, who would suffer a defeat, going from 7 seats to 2 or 3. This same Wednesday, their candidate, Ada Colau, called for the unity of the left to reach a joint candidacy before Friday, when the deadline for submitting coalitions ends.

The third force would be the PP, which would maintain its six representatives or win one more. Junts, which had 7, could lose two or three, confirming the downward trend that polls have been showing for some time. The vote against the housing decrees of the Spanish government by the Junts members (as well as the PP and Vox) served as an argument for Pedro Sánchez to call early elections. The Spanish far-right, for its part, would rise from 2 to 5 or 6 deputies. Catalonia would continue to contribute more votes to the left-wing bloc (between 30 and 33 of the 48 deputies distributed there). Three years ago there were 33 (19 from PSOE, 7 from ERC, and 7 from the Comuns).

The CUP, which has agreed not to run in the elections, could have achieved one, while Podemos, alone, would not win any, although the agreement with ERC means it will not put up a fight in Catalonia.

In the Catalan elections, the CEO depicts a scenario similar to that of three months ago. The PSC remains in first position, but drops compared to 2024, going from 42 seats to 33 or 35, in a continuous decline that private polls have also been indicating. In July, the CEO gave the socialists a range of between 36 and 38 representatives. ERC and Aliança would dispute second place, neck and neck, with the republicans slightly ahead with 24 or 26 deputies, and Sílvia Orriols' party with 23 to 25. Both parties maintain the same results as in the public body's last barometer.

Junts would stop the transfer of voters to Aliança and would recover between two and four seats compared to the last barometer, ending up with 18 or 20 representatives. Be that as it may, the Junts members would lose half of the votes in relation to the 2024 elections. PP and Vox would tie for fifth place with 12 or 13 parliamentarians, with a slight decrease for the Popular Party and a testimonial increase for Santiago Abascal's party. Comuns (6) and CUP (4) would repeat, more or less, the same results as two years ago.

Leader rating

Regarding the assessment of political leaders, Salvador Illa continues to be the preferred choice for president of the Generalitat with 20% support, two points less than in July, despite not passing and remaining with a 4.9. The president of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras, snatches second place from the top leader of Aliança Catalana, Sílvia Orriols, going from 5 to 16% and is the only leader who passes with a flat 5. The leader of the Islamophobic party drops to third place with 13%, which still rises five points compared to three months ago, with an average grade of 4. The leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, is fourth in the preference of Catalans for the presidency of the Generalitat (11%), doubling the 5% of the last barometer, with a grade of 3.7.

In Spain, the current Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, continues to be incontestably the favorite of Catalans to remain the tenant of Moncloa. Thus, 39% of those surveyed want him to revalidate the position, while the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and of Vox, Santiago Abascal, only have the support of 7 and 8% respectively. "Sánchez achieves double the support of the PSC because he receives the support of pro-independence voters or other left-wing formations," highlighted the director of the CEO, Joan Rodríguez Teruel. All three fail: Sánchez, with a 4.3, Feijóo, with a 2.3 and Abascal, with a 1.9.

43% of Catalans, in favor of independence

The 'yes' for independence drops two points compared to July and stands at 43%, still behind the 'no', the preferred option for 50% of Catalans. In any case, support for a sovereign state had not been this high since June 2023, a fact that highlights the social revival of the independence movement. The party with the most pro-independence voters is the CUP with 80%, followed by Junts (74%) and Aliança and ERC with only 53%, which demonstrates their ability to penetrate people who do not share the state model proposed by these parties.

Rodríguez Teruel has attributed the low support for a sovereign state among republican voters to two factors: "It attracts PSC voters who are not pro-independence and it has an exodus of pro-independence votes towards Aliança". The fact that Esquerra has more federalists (30%) than even the PSC (26%), being second in the entire parliamentary arc, only behind the Comuns, highlights that Oriol Junqueras' party captures voters who are not in the pro-independence orbit. Aliança, however, is the pro-independence party with the most voters who bet on Catalonia remaining an autonomous community with 22%.