The PSC would win the Spanish and Catalan elections with ERC and Aliança competing.

The PSC would win the Spanish and Catalan elections with ERC and Aliança vying for second place. The republicans line up for the second position in the general elections with Common in free fall, according to the CEO. - CAST - ENG BarcelonaThe PSC would win the Spanish elections as it did in 2023, with an undeniable victory like the one achieved three years ago. This is the forecast from the Center for Opinion Studies (CEO) one and a half months ahead of the polls. The Salvador Illa party would also win the Catalan elections, but with a narrower margin than in 2024, with ERC and Aliança Catalana vying for second place. This is based on the second barometer of 2026, which was presented this Wednesday with a survey conducted between September 1st and October 5th, just before Pedro Sánchez advanced the elections. In Congress, the candidacy led by the minister and former mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, would be the winner of the polls, the victory already achieved by Meritxell Batet. The socialists would validate the 19 deputies from 2023, nine more than the second political force. ERC of Gabriel Rufián would rise to second place with a spread ranging from 10 to 11 seats (currently having 7), to the detriment of the Common, which would suffer a defeat going from 7 seats to 2 or 3. On the same Wednesday, their candidate, Ada Colau, called for the unity of the left to achieve a joint candidacy before Friday, when the deadline for presenting coalitions ends. The third force would be the PP, which would maintain the six representatives or win one. Junts, which had 7, could lose two or three, confirming the downward trend shown by the polls recently. The vote against the juntas (and from PP and Vox) on the two housing decrees of the Spanish government served as an argument for Pedro Sánchez to advance the elections. The Spanish right-wing extreme, for its part, would rise from 2 to 5 or 6 deputies. Catalonia would continue to add more votes to the left bloc (between 30 and 33 of the 48 deputies). Three years ago there were 33 (19 from the PSOE, 7 from ERC and 7 from Common). The CUP, which has agreed not to run in the polls, could have won one, while Podem, on its own, would not win any, although the agreement with ERC will prevent it from fighting in Catalonia. For the Catalan elections, the CEO drew a scenario similar to the one three months ago. The PSC remains in first place, but lower than in 2024 and passes from 42 seats to 33 or 35, in a continuous decline also reflected in private polls. In July, the CEO gave the socialists a spread of between 36 and 38 representatives. ERC and Aliança would vie for second place, neck and neck, with the republicans having a slight edge with 24 or 26 deputies, and the party of Sílvia Orriols with 23 to 25. Both parties maintain the same results as in the last public barometer. Junts would stop the transfer of votes to Aliança and recover between two and four seats compared to the last barometer, remaining with 18 or 20 representatives. As it stands, the juntas lose half of the votes in relation to the polls of 2024. PP and Vox would tie in fifth place with 12 or 13 parliamentarians, with a slight decline for the popular party and a testimonial increase for the formation of Santiago Abascal. Common (6) and CUP (4) would repeat, if not already, the same results as two years ago. Assessment of leaders Regarding the assessment of political leaders, Salvador Illa continues to be the favorite as president of the Generalitat with 20% support, two points less than in July, although he does not approve and has 4.9. The president of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras, overtook the leader of the Catalan Alliance, Sílvia Orriols, for second place, moving from 5 to 16% and is the only leader who approves with a 5. The leader of the Islamophobic party falls to third place with 13%, which is a five-point increase compared to three months ago, with an average score of 4. The leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, is the fourth in the Catalan people's preference for the presidency of the Generalitat (11%), doubling the 5% from the last barometer, with a score of 3.7. In Spain, the current Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, remains undeniably the favorite of the Catalans because he remains the incumbent of the Moncloa. Thus, 39% of those surveyed want him to validate the position, while the leader of the Popular party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and that of Vox, Santiago Abascal, only have the support of 7% and 8% respectively. "Sánchez achieves double the support of the PSC because he receives the support of independent voters or other left-wing formations," highlighted the CEO director, Joan Rodríguez Teruel. All three have: Sánchez, with a 4.3, Feijóo, with a 2.3, and Abascal, with a 1.9. 43% of Catalans in favor of independence The yes to independence score is two points lower than in July and stands at 43%, still behind the no, the preferred option for 50% of Catalans. In any case, support for the state itself was not as high as in June 2023, which reflects the revived social trend of independence. The party with the most independent voters is the CUP with 80%, followed by Junts (74%) and Aliança and ERC with only 53%, which demonstrates their capacity to penetrate people who do not share the state model that these parties propose. Rodríguez Teruel has attributed the low support for the state itself from republican voters to two factors: "Attracting voters from the PSC who are not independentists and a leakage of independentist votes to Aliança." That Esquerra has more federalists (30%) than even the PSC (26%) and is second in the entire parliamentary arc, even behind the Common, which shows that the party of Oriol Junqueras captures voters who are not in the independentist orbit. Aliança, however, is the independentist party with the most votes that bet for Catalonia remaining an autonomous community with 22%. - The data collection was done in person (home) between September 1st and October 5th, 2026 by the company GESOP. 2,000 people aged 18 and over with voting rights were interviewed. The margin of error for the whole sample is ± 2.19 at a 95% confidence level.