MADRID, April 9 (Xinhua) -- An opinion poll published on Tuesday predicts that the Socialist Party (PSOE) of current Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would win the April 28 general election in Spain but would fall well short of an overall majority.
A theoretical coalition of right-wing and center-right parties -- the People's Party (PP), Vox and Ciudadanos -- would also fail to hold a majority in the Spanish Congress.
The poll, carried out by Spain's Center for Sociological Research (CIS), came out just 19 days before the general elections and was based on over 16,000 interviews carried out between March 1 and March 18.
According to the poll's findings, the PSOE is predicted to take 30.2 percent of the vote in the forthcoming election, winning between 123 and 138 seats in the 350-seat Congress -- well short of the 176 seats needed for an overall majority.
Sanchez's party is followed by the right-wing PP, which appears to be heading for its worst ever general election result with just 17.2 percent of the vote, which translates into between 66 and 76 seats.
To put that into perspective, the PP won 33.03 percent of the vote and 123 seats in the June 2016 election, so their support has almost halved in just under three years.
The center-right Ciudadanos party would claim 13.6 percent of the vote and between 42 and 51 seats, while the left-wing Unidos Podemos (and its Catalan and Valencian branches) has 15.1 percent support and would win between 34 and 43 seats.
Finally, the extreme right-wing Vox party is in line to win its first seats in Congress, with 11.9 percent of voters saying they would support the party, which has based much of its campaign on anti-immigration and anti-feminist rhetoric.
If these predictions are correct, the PSOE and Ciudadanos could form a coalition government, although the leader of Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, has already ruled out that possibility.
The PSOE would also be able to govern in alliance with Unidos Podemos (as they did in the recently ended parliament) and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).
However, a key factor in the CIS poll is that a record 41.6 percent of respondents said they had not decided who they will vote for on April 28, meaning that when the election campaign officially opens this weekend all options will remain open.
