MADRID, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez continues to see its support rise, according to the latest quarterly opinion poll published by the Spanish Center for Sociological Investigation (CIS) on Tuesday.
The CIS poll shows the "Sanchez effect" has continued to last almost four months since Sanchez became prime minister, replacing Mariano Rajoy of the People's Party, after Rajoy lost a no-confidence vote in the Spanish Congress on May 31.
If a general election was held now in Spain, the PSOE would win 30.5 percent of the votes, according to the CIS, which is up 0.6 percent on the 29.9 percent they would have won at the end of June, shortly after taking power.
It is the first time the PSOE have managed over 30 percent in the polls since early in the economic crisis in 2009 when Jose Luis Zapatero was the prime minister of Spain.
Meanwhile, the election of Pablo Casado as Rajoy's replacement has seen the PP stop their slide in the polls, although doubts over Casado's Masters Degree, which he apparently obtained without attending class or sitting any exams at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, means the party has seen its vote share climb by just 0.4 percent from 20.4 to 20.8 percent.
The PP's improvement has come at the expense of center-right formation Ciudadanos, whose vote share dropped from 20.4 to 19.6 percent.
Finally, the left-wing party Podemos, which has been Sanchez's main ally in the minority government, has had a slight recovery in support from 15.6 percent to 16.1 percent.
It meant that Spain's center-left wing parties could count on a total of 46.6 percent of the votes in an election as opposed to 40.4 percent for the center-right-wing bloc.
