MADRID, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The campaign period for Spain's April 28 general election ends on Friday to allow for a day of reflection ahead of Sunday's vote.
Although polls predict a victory for the Socialist Party (PSOE) of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez with 26-30 percent of the vote, his party will very likely fall well short of commanding an overall majority in the Spanish Congress.
Accordingly, Sanchez will have to form a pact with either the left-wing Unidos Podemos party or the center-right Ciudadanos.
Sanchez, who will end his campaign with a rally in Valencia, has indicated that he would prefer to conclude a coalition agreement with Unidos Podemos, but in the two televised election debates on Tuesday and Wednesday night he failed to rule out pursuing an accord with Ciudadanos.
According to most opinion polls, a PSOE-Unidos Podemos pact would still leave Sanchez needing to reach agreement with regional nationalist parties, such as the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), while a PSOE-Ciudadanos pact could scrape together enough seats for a majority.
Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera, who will also end his campaign in Valencia, appears to have ruled that option out. Rivera has said he won't form a coalition with the PSOE because Sanchez spoke to Catalan nationalists earlier this year in a failed attempt to push his budget proposals through Congress.
The Ciudadanos leader appears to prefer an agreement with the right-wing People's Party (PP) led by Pablo Casado, although a Ciudadanos-PP pact would also fall short of commanding a majority.
Casado seems open to agreement with Ciudadanos, and on Friday, before ending his campaign with a meeting in Madrid, he also opened the door to allowing the extreme right-wing Vox party into a coalition, saying they "would have the influence they want."
Vox has appeared on the political landscape from virtually nowhere after winning only 47,000 votes in the June 2016 elections. This party, which stands on an anti-immigration, anti-feminist but pro-Spanish unity platform, could play a key role in Sunday's vote.
Official polls indicate that Vox could win between 10-12 percent of the vote and around 30 seats, but other parties fear that there is a "hidden vote" for the group led by former PP member Santiago Abascal, and that Vox would actually do a lot better and possibly even challenge the PP's hegemony of the Spanish right-wing.
A three-way coalition of the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox is predicted to fall short of the 176 seats needed for an absolute majority, but polls conducted prior to the June 2016 elections tended to overestimate support for left-wing parties and underestimate the number of votes cast for the right.
A bad-tempered campaign has been short on policy proposals, with the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos continually attacking Sanchez for his willingness to talk to the Catalan nationalists.
The three right-wing parties have been at pains to stress that only they can guarantee the continued unity of Spain despite Sanchez using the televised debates to assure voters that he would not allow an independence referendum to be held in the Catalan region.
Unidos Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, who is generally judged to have won both debates, has attempted to maintain his party's focus on social issues, such as women's rights, education, health and the need for decent working conditions.
With over 20 percent of voters said to be undecided, Iglesias' strategy could win Unidos Podemos votes from the PSOE, but the real election challenge will probably be convincing those voters who have yet to choose between the Socialists and Ciudadanos and whether their vote will go to the left or the right.
Meanwhile, the battle on the right will be decided by people choosing between Ciudadanos and the PP (which, despite attempts at regeneration, is still affected by a long-running series of corruption scandals) and by how many people abandon the PP to support Vox.
Early signs are that Sunday will see a high turnout, helped by favourable weather. The Spanish Post Office has had to deal with 1.2 million applications for postal votes.
High turnouts traditionally favour the left wing in Spain, but there is no guarantee this will be the case on Sunday, and the result is still very much in the balance.
