Spain votes on Nov. 29, months ahead of schedule. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the snap election on Oct. 5, after Congress rejected his minority government's housing decrees and protests over rents spread across the country (the government put one Madrid march at more than 70,000 people).
Sánchez has led Spain for more than 8 years without ever winning a majority of his own. He's stayed in power by stitching together support from parties on the far left and Catalan and Basque nationalists. He says he wants voters to hand him "a much larger progressive majority."
Polls point the other way. Partido Popular (PP), the center-right party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leads nationally, with the far-right Vox in third. If they govern together, Vox would be the first far-right party in Spain's national government since the end of the Franco dictatorship.
We've opened a [<u>7-question series</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/spain2026/) on the election. Here's what to know.
## How the vote works
Spain's Congress of Deputies has 350 seats. A party or bloc needs **176** for an absolute majority.
Seats are allocated province by province, using the [D'Hondt method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method). That means small provinces can swing a lot of seats on modest shifts in the vote, and national vote share doesn't translate neatly into seats.
Winning the most seats isn't enough to govern. A prime minister has to win an investiture vote in Congress: an absolute majority on the first ballot, or more yes votes than no votes on the second. If nobody is invested within 2 months of the first vote, Parliament is dissolved and Spain votes again (as it did in 2016 and again in 2019).
## What happened last time
In July 2023, PP won the most seats (137) but fell short of a majority even with Vox's 33. Feijóo lost his investiture vote. Sánchez's Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), with 121 seats, was reinvested that November with support from Catalan and Basque parties.
The polls also missed. Heading into 2023, they overstated the right, and PP and Vox ended up with 170 seats combined. That miss is a big part of why this election is harder to call than the polls make it look.
## What forecasters expect so far
The community forecast puts PP and Vox at a combined **198 seats** (middle 50%: 191 to 205), with 101 forecasters in so far. That works out to about a 95% chance they clear 176.
There's also a roughly 16% chance they reach 210. That's 3/5 of the chamber, the bar for certain constitutional reforms.
The comment section is arguing over how much to trust the polls. One forecaster pointed out that month-out polling errors in Spain’s last 5 elections were +4, +16, −22, +19 and −7 seats, and argued the community was underpricing an outcome above 215 (the community has since raised it from about 5% to 7%). Another pushes back that the seat models all draw on the same national polls, so their agreement shouldn't be read as independent confirmation.
[<u>Forecast here</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/46036/how-many-seats-will-ppvox-receive-in-the-2026-spanish-general-election/) (this one is also in the Metaculus Cup).
## The rest of the series
The community forecasts on the other 6 questions are now public. Most have fewer than 20 forecasters so far, so there’s plenty of room to move them:
* [Which party will win the most votes?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/46265/which-party-will-win-the-most-votes-in-spains-nov-29-2026-general-election/) PP is at 78%, with PSOE at 20%. PP vs. PSOE is the race to watch.
* [How many seats will PP, PSOE, Vox and Frente Amplio each win?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/46263/how-many-seats-will-each-of-these-parties-win-in-spains-nov-29-2026-election/) Forecasters expect about 131 for PP, 110 for PSOE, 67 for Vox and 12 for Frente Amplio, the new left coalition of Sumar, Izquierda Unida, Más Madrid and Comuns.
* [What share of the vote will Vox win?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/46266/what-share-of-the-vote-will-vox-win-in-spains-nov-29-2026-general-election/) The community expects 19.2%, up from 12.4% in 2023.
* [Who will be the next prime minister invested?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/46264/who-will-be-the-first-pm-of-spain-invested-after-the-nov-29-2026-election/) Feijóo is at 90% and Sánchez at 6%. The chance that nobody is invested before Oct. 1, 2027 is about 1%.
* [When will Congress invest a prime minister?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/46269/when-will-spains-congress-of-deputies-invest-a-pm-after-the-nov-29-2026-vote/) The median is Jan. 25, 2027. PP and Vox have governed together after this year’s regional elections, but those deals took months.
* [What will turnout be?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/46270/what-will-voter-turnout-be-in-spains-november-29-2026-general-election/) Forecasters expect 70.5%, well above 2023’s official 66.6% (note: only 8 forecasters have weighed in so far). The official figure counts Spaniards registered abroad, who rarely vote, which is why it usually comes in below the election-night number.
If you're following the race in Spanish, El País data journalist Kiko Llaneras (our current [guest forecaster](https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/45384/announcing-the-metaculus-cup-fall-2026-with-kiko-llaneras/) for [the Metaculus Cup](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/metaculus-cup-fall-2026/)) is a good place to start.
## Add your forecast
Most questions close Nov. 28, the day before the vote. If you think the polls are about to miss again (in either direction), now's the time to say so.
### [<u>See the full series →</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/spain2026/)