Secret opinion polls

Poll puts Zapatero ahead (but don't tell the Spanish)

Spain's Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, is set to clinch re-election on Sunday by a narrow margin, according to the results of a poll commissioned by The Times.

Conducted by the Spanish polling firm Sigma Dos, the latest survey shows Mr 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 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.

Several Spanish media outlets, including the newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya, are now campaigning for an end to the “obsolete” law, introduced in the 1980s with the argument that polls 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 in a front page editorial today. The newspaper has decided to publish its own polls from a website in Andorra, just beyond the Spanish border, giving the Socialists a 3.4 point lead.

The Times poll was conducted yesterday 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, the candidates clashed over the worsening economy, rising 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 Eta, the violent Basque separatist group, 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.

Mr Rajoy has changed tack during the campaign, 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 in Spain. Sixty-two per cent of respondents said they would support such a proposal while just 26.4 per cent rejected it.

The Spanish Government has blasted Mr Rajoy's plan as xenophobic and redundant: immigrants must already abide by Spanish law, it points out, and even those born in the country would have a hard time agreeing what “Spanish customs” are. But in private, Socialist Party officials worry that the high rate of immigration in the past few years could cost it votes on Sunday.

With the influx of immigrants, 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 has been another source of worry for Socialist Party strategists after four years of strong growth. New unemployment figures showed this week that 53,000 Spaniards lost their jobs in February, taking the overall unemployment rate to 8.6 per cent. The Spanish 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 around, the challenge for the Socialists has been to motivate those voters again to support it at the polls. According to the Sigma Dos poll, they have managed to motivate supporters by playing-up fears of a Popular Party government. Turnout is projected to be about 75 per cent of the electorate, only slightly below the 77 per cent in 2004.

“The highly polarised campaign has succeeded in galvanising voters,” said Carlos Malo de Molina, head of Sigma Dos. “The uncertainty over the final result is also driving them to the polls.”

Source: The Times