Spain: August poll average gives PP and Vox an absolute majority

In Europe the morning edition had focused on Ceuta and on the fourth visit of a Spanish minister to the autonomous city. This analysis looks at the same country from a different angle, that of electoral numbers, and is not an update of this morning’s piece: it is a separate story.

The average of polls published in August 2026 places the Partido Popular at 32.3%, the PSOE at 27.1%, Vox at 17.1% and Sumar at 6.4% (Colmena de Datos). The figure that matters more than the individual percentages is the sum of the blocs: PP and Vox together reach 49.4%, against 36.6% for the combined PSOE-Sumar-Podemos grouping. That is nearly thirteen points of distance between the two potential coalitions, a gap that in the Spanish electoral system is amplified in the conversion into seats.

Party	August 2026 average
PP	32.3%
PSOE	27.1%
Vox	17.1%
Sumar	6.4%
PP + Vox	49.4%
PSOE + Sumar + Podemos	36.6%

The translation into Parliament is provided by an Ipsos survey for La Vanguardia: 132 seats for the PP, 111 for the PSOE, 64 for Vox and 12 for Sumar, with PP and Vox together at 196 seats, that is, above the absolute majority of the Congress (Demócrata). This is the politically decisive point: what matters is not only that the PP is first, but that the two parties to its right have, according to the estimates, the numbers to govern without needing to seek votes from other parliamentary families. This is the condition that has been lacking for the Spanish centre-right during the current legislature.

The second element concerns the PSOE, and should be read with some caution. The 27.1% in the average indicates stabilisation rather than collapse: Pedro Sánchez’s party remains second, just over five points behind the PP, and in the Ipsos estimate it holds 111 seats, against 132 for the PP. The two measures — the individual party’s support and the sum of the bloc — do not contradict each other: the first describes the resilience of the socialist vote, the second its arithmetic insufficiency when the allies are added in, who remain at a combined 36.6% and 123 seats in the sum of PSOE and Sumar.

On the political climate there is a third figure, harsher than the others and by nature more fragile, because it measures opinions rather than voting intentions: according to a SocioMétrica poll for El Español, 70% of Spaniards believe the government should resign over the corruption scandals (Demócrata). Such a large percentage necessarily includes a share of the electorate that continues to declare an intention to vote for the PSOE, and this is exactly the tension the surveys capture: the judgment on the executive is more negative than the actual shift of votes toward the opposition.

It must be said that these are polls, not elections: no general vote is scheduled in the available material, and the August averages are built on surveys conducted in the least representative month of the political year. Still, it stands as a measure of the pressure on the executive, and this is why the story is circulating beyond national borders: the front pages of Italian newspapers on 17 August picked up the Spanish polls unfavourable to Sánchez (Sky TG24).

The number to watch is 196: as long as the estimates confirm it, every crisis of the Spanish government already has an alternative majority available on paper.