---
title: "Sanchez Called an Election About Housing. Polls Suggest Vox Is the Winner So Far"
description: "Surveys give the PP and Vox about 200 seats before the November 29 vote, which makes the real fight one over who gets which ministries"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-10-12T12:08:19Z
modified: 2026-10-12T15:54:58Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/sanchez-called-an-election-about-housing-polls-suggest-vox-i-aba294
language: en
tags: ["politics", "immigration", "housing", "economy", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Sanchez Called an Election About Housing. Polls Suggest Vox Is the Winner So Far

*Surveys give the PP and Vox about 200 seats before the November 29 vote, which makes the real fight one over who gets which ministries*

By Nate Ledger · October 12, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/sanchez-called-an-election-about-housing-polls-suggest-vox-i-aba294

## In brief

- Young Spaniards are increasingly drawn to Vox, with some citing opposition to Sanchez’s migration policy
- Sanchez called a November 29 snap election after parliament rejected two housing decrees amid mass protests
- El País projects 198 seats for PP and Vox against the 176 needed, with the Socialists falling from 121 to 112
- An RTVE poll shows Vox rising from 33 to 65 seats, and an eight-poll average gives the right bloc about 205
- A PP-Vox coalition would put the hard right in power for the first time since Franco died in 1975

“What I really hate about \[Prime Minister Pedro\] Sanchez is how keen he is to allow more migrants into our country,” Alberto Munoz, a 24-year-old computer programmer from Barcelona who wears the red and gold wristband of Vox supporters, [told Graham Keeley of Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/12/far-right-surges-as-crises-threaten-sanchez-could-vox-lead-spain). A growing number of young Spaniards are drawn to the far-right, anti-immigration party, and Munoz is one of them. That is awkward for Pedro Sanchez, who has just called an election on the theory that voters are angry about something else.

The something else is housing. Tens of thousands of people have protested across Spain. It started with the eviction of Maria del Carmen Abascal, 87, known as Maricarmen, from the Madrid flat she had lived in for seven decades. Activists then set up camps in Madrid and other cities. She died this month, after the protests.

On October 2 the People’s Party (PP), Vox and the Catalan party Junts [voted down two government decrees](https://rews.cc/a/spain-s-parliament-rejects-housing-decrees-as-protests-sprea-c71ab5) meant to protect tenants from eviction. Three days later Sanchez [announced a snap election](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/5/spanish-prime-minister-pedro-sanchez-announces-snap-election), set for [November 29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Spanish_general_election), hoping to turn that anger into seats. His acting government has since passed both measures anyway. Sanchez says they protect “the most vulnerable” in a market distorted by speculation.

![A large hand inserts a ballot into a slot in a house roof, while an elderly person with a cane stands in the open doorway.](https://rews.cc/img/4de87c3ec1e02744beb8a3d0b757f366c9726e98.webp)

I think the simplest way to understand a snap election is as an option. The Socialists had trailed in nearly every poll for months before Sanchez called this one. A vote was coming by 2027 regardless: earlier this year he had refused to hold it alongside the May 2027 local and regional elections and hinted at February or March 2027. If you expect to lose on schedule, picking your own date costs you very little. What it buys is a chance that the campaign is about your best issue rather than your worst ones. Observers list the worst ones as corruption scandals involving members of his family, criticism of how he handled the Ceuta migration crisis, and the amnesty for the Catalan separatists behind the failed 2017 independence bid, an amnesty whose consequences are [still arriving](https://rews.cc/a/after-nine-autumns-of-exile-madrid-lifts-the-warrant-on-puig-3209ce). Housing is the one issue where his opponents had just voted against something that sounds like basic decency. That’s a reasonable bet.

So far the bet isn’t paying off. A majority in the 350-seat Congress takes 176 seats. An El País survey cited by Al Jazeera gives the PP and Vox 198 between them, which is 22 to spare, with Vox’s support roughly doubling since 2023. The same survey has the Socialists falling to 112 seats from 121. An RTVE poll has Vox jumping from 33 seats to 65, with the PP flat and every left-wing party losing ground. A Sigma Dos poll for El Mundo, as Reuters reported, gives the right 203 seats. It also contains a confusing coincidence: its 112 is for the Socialists and their junior partner Sumar together, not the Socialists alone.

![Three stacks of red, green, and blue chairs increase in height from left to right, casting dark shadows on a bright yellow background.](https://rews.cc/img/f3214afdad96f9fe26d62b3049a964c2a43c8a1d.webp)

The averages say much the same. PolitPro’s [weighted polling average](https://politpro.eu/en/spain) puts the PP on 32.3%, the Socialists on 26.5%, Vox on 18.7% and Sumar on 11.3%. Add those up and the two right-wing parties have 51.0%, while the two governing parties have 37.8%. The Olive Press [averaged eight polls](https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2026/10/02/spain-election-predictions-who-would-win/) and came out with roughly 142 seats for the PP, 104 for the Socialists and 64 for Vox. The PP would fall well short of a majority alone, but with Vox it would have about 205 seats, and none of the eight polls put that bloc under 199.

Anyway.

## The ministry question

If the right winning is the base case, the interesting question is what the deal between the two parties looks like. In 2023 the PP won the most votes, fell short of a majority and did not team up with Vox, and Sanchez stayed in office with Junts’ backing. Since then the two right-wing parties have formed four regional governments and share power in about 100 councils, so they have had practice.

Vox’s national spokesman, José Antonio Fuster, said: “There is hope for Spain with these elections.” He also warned the PP against repeating its 2023 mistakes by starting to share out ministries before the votes are in. Translated, that is a negotiating position: please don’t settle the terms in public now, while our seat count is still going up.

![Two hands hold a ring of four cream-colored keys marked with bank symbols against a yellow background, with one hand gripping the largest key.](https://rews.cc/img/7f386b9d5a5ecb3c513e65164c909e958031fb4c.webp)

Steven Forti of the Autonomous University of Barcelona thinks the terms are the whole story, and that what counts is which ministries Vox ends up running. He says Vox, like far-right parties elsewhere in Europe and Latin America, keeps its distance from Franco, though not always very convincingly. Vox leader Santiago Abascal calls Sanchez’s government the “worst for the past 80 years.” Do the subtraction: 80 years back from 2026 is 1946, so the comparison includes 29 years of a dictatorship that lasted until Franco’s death in 1975. The implication is that those governments were better. Forti calls this “dog whistle politics.” A PP-Vox coalition would be the first time the hard right has held power in Spain since Franco died.

Forti puts the young vote down to rebellion against the established parties, a sense of nationhood and hostility to migrants. Antonio Alonso of University CEU San Pablo points to the arithmetic of the two camps: the left is badly fragmented and hard to rally as one front, while the PP and Vox are more united. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo calls the vote “an election between corruption and decency,” which is a fairly direct way of saying he would rather talk about Sanchez’s weak points than about rent. On housing he answered with a supply figure, promising 200,000 homes a year along with tax cuts. In a country that [builds too few homes](https://rews.cc/a/sanchez-calls-a-snap-election-betting-housing-is-better-grou-af55c2), that is a direct challenge on the one issue Sanchez wanted to own.

The wider European stakes are simple. The far right has made gains in France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Finland, and a Socialist defeat would end one of the last left-wing governments in Europe. Sanchez has a reputation as a shrewd operator, and he did get to choose the date. The voters, though, get to choose what the election is about, and some of them turned up already wearing wristbands.