Average general polls: Feijóo extends lead, Sánchez does not recover and the right gains 14 points on the left

The "Spanish electoral law" at the state level is the Organic Law 5/1985, of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG) (base text). As of July 11, 2026, there is no single major closed reform in process, but rather several simultaneous pieces: a reform already approved and in force to grant Formentera its own senator, a government organic bill on electoral debates and polls in the amendment phase, and several bills (mainly on disqualifications and postal voting) in very early stages or already rejected. In recent years, the most significant change applied to the system has been the elimination of the requested vote in 2022.

1. Basic framework and latest reforms in force

The central regulation is the 1985 LOREG, modified on numerous occasions. Among recent reforms, the following stand out:

• Organic Law 12/2022, on external voting (LO 12/2022): eliminates the requested vote and rewrites article 75, so that absent residents (CERA) receive the documentation without requesting it and deadlines are extended. The newspaper Demócrata summarizes its impact on external voting and the so-called “Grandchildren Law” in several recent pieces, for example on CERA and requested vote or on how many new Spaniards can vote from abroad (CERA analysis, external vote and Grandchildren Law).
• Organic Law 2/2026, of June 30, already published in the BOE (LO 2/2026): adapts the LOREG to the reform of article 69.3 of the Constitution so that Formentera becomes its own Senate constituency. It modifies articles 161.2 and 165.2 to separate the constituencies of Ibiza and Formentera and regulate the corresponding seat. The Congress explained this reform in its press releases on the consideration and single reading (consideration, single reading), and Demócrata has followed the process in several reports (prior in Congress, processing in Senate, final vote, approval in Congress).

2. Initiatives currently in parliamentary processing

In the XV Legislature, parliamentary data indicate at least five active initiatives modifying the LOREG:

• Government Organic Bill (Congress, 121/000063): “which modifies the LOREG”. It is the translation of the draft approved in the Council of Ministers in April and July 2025 (first round, second round). It is in the amendment phase in the Constitutional Commission, with extended deadlines. According to the PSOE itself, its content focuses on:
  • Making at least one electoral debate mandatory on public media in each campaign, with participation of all forces with representation and the so-called “significant political groups” (PSOE note).
  • Obliging the publication of microdata from electoral polls duly anonymized.
  Demócrata details this proposal, highlighting prior validation by the Electoral Board of the public media coverage plans and the end of exclusive “face-to-face” debates on those channels (Demócrata analysis, Council of Ministers context).
• PSOE Organic Bill (Congress, 122/000280): also titled to modify the LOREG. According to the parliamentary file, it is in an advanced phase, “pending report and referral to the Senate”, although content details are not broken down in available sources.
• Organic Bill on disqualifications from the Senate (Congress, 124/000028) and the corresponding one in the Senate itself (622/000048, Popular Group): both focus on expanding the causes of disqualification in the LOREG. As of the data date, they are:
  • In the Senate, pending consideration.
  • In the Congress, in amendment phase, with extended deadlines.
• Vox Organic Bill (Congress, 122/000065): aims to declare justice fugitives ineligible. It is listed on the Congress website as pending consideration, meaning it has not even held its first admission debate yet.

Besides these, there have been other punctual initiatives on the LOREG that have failed in the Plenary. For example, two previous attempts by the PP to reform the electoral law – one on ballots for the European Parliament and another on disqualification for terrorism – were rejected in the Legislature, as documented by Demócrata in its legislative priorities overview (Demócrata report).

3. Recently proposed reforms and open debates

In the last two to three years, the political and technical debate on electoral reform has gone much further than the initiatives that have actually entered the Cortes:

• Debate and poll system: this is the block that has been translated into a government bill, already described. The declared objective is to “strengthen democracy” and consolidate in the LOREG criteria that the Central Electoral Board had been applying by instruction.
• Postal voting: Vox has tried to reform the LOREG so that postal votes are deposited and counted in separate ballot boxes, alleging fraud prevention. The bill has been debated but the Congress Plenary rejected it, with the vote against from PSOE and its allies, who warn of risks to the secrecy of the vote, especially in small municipalities. The newspaper Demócrata has covered this struggle in several pieces (initial proposal, prior debate, rejection in Plenary, rejection report, additional context, government blocking due to costs).
• Accessible voting and disability: Junts has presented a non-legislative motion to urge the Government to reform article 87 LOREG, aiming to guarantee a more accessible vote for people with disabilities, especially in polling stations, postal voting, and voting from abroad, reinforcing autonomy against the “trusted person” system (Junts PNL). It is not a direct law reform but points to future changes.
• Electoral expenses, microcredits, and mailing: based on reports from the Court of Auditors, PP, PSOE, and other groups have proposed technical adjustments in the regulation of campaign expenses, microcredits, and propaganda mailing. Several resolutions explicitly call to “take advantage of the LOREG reform in process in Congress” to incorporate a more precise categorization of expenses and review the mailing system, although for now these are parliamentary recommendations, not yet articulated text (see, for example, Demócrata analyses on these votes: Mixed Commission debate, vote, PP proposal details and Sumar position).
• Threshold in European elections: European institutions urge Spain to introduce a minimum threshold between 2% and 5% in the European elections, which would require touching the LOREG. Demócrata reports that Spain is the only country that has not yet ratified this reform and that the Government has not prioritized it (European Parliament resolution, analysis on Spanish blocking). So far, it has not become a concrete initiative in Congress or Senate.

Other more ambitious debates – changing the D’Hondt formula, partial single constituency, new barriers for Congress, or open lists – are collected in expert documents and academic literature, but do not appear as active projects or bills in the Cortes Generales as of today.

The president of the Popular Party (PP) is the highest political and organizational leader of the party: legally represents the organization, directs its strategy, and presides over the main governing bodies. According to the current PP Statutes, he concentrates the key powers over political line, internal coordination, and team design, and is also the automatic candidate for the Presidency of the Government when the party runs in general elections. Currently, this position is held by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, according to the organizational information published by the PP itself on its website.

Representation and political leadership

The PP Statutes (article 44 of the text approved at the XXI National Congress, accessible in PDF format in the national Statutes) assign the president the unique political and legal representation of the party in all territorial areas. This means he is the one who responds on behalf of the PP before institutions, other parties, media, and civil society.

The president sets the general strategy of the organization: establishes the broad lines of opposition or support to the Government, guides the PP's position in legislative debates, and supervises the preparation of electoral programs and political action. In the internal structure described by the party itself and analyzed by Demócrata in pieces such as the analysis on the PP reconfiguration under Feijóo and the report on the new leadership, the presidency is positioned above the General Secretariat and the vice-secretariats.

Direction of internal bodies

The national president presides over the two main governing bodies:

• National Executive Committee, which makes day-to-day political and organizational decisions.
• National Board of Directors, a broader body that sets the party's major orientations.

In both cases, the Statutes grant him a casting vote in case of a tie, reinforcing his arbitration capacity in internal decisions. Additionally, the president can delegate powers to the general secretary or other members of the Executive Committee, according to the statutory text.

Powers over organization and appointments

A central part of the president's functions is the team design and internal party architecture:

• He proposes to the Executive Committee the appointment of the general secretary, a figure who, as the PP has noted in various regional organizational notes (for example in the Andalusian regulation), is the main person responsible for internal organization and management and assumes the ordinary substitution of the president.
• He proposes members of internal control bodies such as the National Electoral Committee, the Committee of Rights and Guarantees, or the Affiliations Committee, cited in the Statutes report explained in this Demócrata information.
• He can appoint up to five members of the Executive Committee and fill vacancies due to resignation or death, according to the statutory articles.
• He proposes the creation of Study Commissions and appoints their presidents, who must be party members.

In practice, as reflected in reports on internal succession (for example the appointment of Miguel Tellado as general secretary), the presidency concentrates the power to configure the core team and adjust the organizational chart at each congress.

Political coordination and message control

The Statutes assign the president the function of coordinating the political action of the entire PP: parliamentary groups, regional and local governments, and territorial structures. This coordination has been reinforced with new instruments foreseen in the Statutes report, such as the Council of Regional Presidents and other internal forums explained by the party in the official note on the Statutes report and analyzed by Demócrata in its coverage of the change in “primaries”.

Additionally, the president must authorize statements made on behalf of the PP or that affect its image or political line. This gives him direct control over the party's public message, complemented by the assumption from the presidency of areas such as foreign affairs, as covered in Demócrata's piece on the PP's international wing in this report.

Extraordinary powers and candidacy for government

The Statutes foresee that, in cases of urgent necessity and when it is impossible to convene other bodies, the president may temporarily assume their powers, making decisions that must later be ratified. This is a closing clause that reinforces the presidency's role as the ultimate decision-making instance in internal or political crises.

Finally, the statutory text itself states that the national president elected by the Congress is, by definition, the PP's candidate for the Presidency of the Government, unless the Congress itself decides otherwise. This organic connection between internal leadership and institutional candidacy aligns with similar schemes in regional statutes, such as those of the Region of Murcia (Murcian statutes), and consolidates the clearly presidentialist character of the PP.

Context of recent statutory reform

The president's powers are framed within Statutes updated at the XXI National Congress (July 2025), in which the PP approved a “consensus” text oriented towards transparency, internal control, and participation, as explained by the party itself in this note and summarized by the newspaper Demócrata in pieces such as the National Congress guide and its live coverage and subsequent political analyses. Within this framework, the president's figure remains the party's center of gravity but surrounded by more supervisory bodies (Compliance Office, specific committees, etc.), configuring a balance between strong leadership and internal controls.

Other information and contexts mentioned or related in the cited sources can be consulted, among many others, in the following links from the newspaper Demócrata or other institutions: [link], [link], [link], [link], [link], [link], [link], [link], [link], [link], as well as in external documents and analyses on party organization such as [link], [link], [link], [link], [link] and [link].

The Congress of Deputies resulting from the general elections of July 23, 2023, is composed, according to available data, of 12 political formations with effective representation. Together they sum 343 active deputies registered, mainly distributed among the Popular Party, PSOE, Vox, and Sumar, which concentrate the vast majority of seats. Additionally, there are several nationalist and territorially limited parties that complete the representation. Below I detail, first, the distribution by parties and, then, how they are structured into parliamentary groups within the Chamber.

Current seat distribution by party

According to the count of active deputies assigned to each political grouping in the Congress (XV Legislature, chamber_id 17), the distribution is as follows:

• Popular Party (Popular): 136 deputies.
• Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE): 121 deputies.
• Vox: 33 deputies.
• Sumar (SUMAR): 26 deputies.
• Esquerra Republicana: 7 deputies.
• Junts per Catalunya: 7 deputies.
• Basque Nationalist Party (PNV): 5 deputies.
• Podemos: 4 deputies.
• Compromís: 1 deputy.
• Canarian Nationalist: 1 deputy.
• Galician Nationalist: 1 deputy.
• Navarrese People's Union (UPN): 1 deputy.

These figures come from the records of currently active deputies (field active = TRUE) assigned to Congress groups and linked to each party (agroupation) in the XV Legislature. The sum of these seats yields a total of 343 deputies with active assignment at this moment within the identified formations; no further detail is available in the sources about the difference up to the theoretical 350 seats of the Chamber.

It is important to emphasize that these data reflect the current situation of the Legislature, not necessarily the exact snapshot of election night nor the legal form of coalitions in candidacies. For example, Sumar and Podemos are distinguished separately, even though they ran related in the left political space. Similarly, parties labeled as Galician Nationalist or Canarian Nationalist gather the representation of forces of Galician and Canarian scope, respectively, but the sources do not detail the specific electoral brand here.

Parliamentary groups in the Congress

In the Congress, deputies are organized into parliamentary groups, which are the structures through which most initiatives, time allocation, and presence in the Board and commissions are articulated. With the available data, the distribution of deputies by group is as follows:

• Popular Parliamentary Group in the Congress: 136 deputies, all linked to the Popular party.
• Socialist Parliamentary Group in the Congress: 121 deputies, all from PSOE.
• Vox Parliamentary Group in the Congress: 33 deputies, from the Vox party.
• Plurinational Sumar Parliamentary Group in the Congress: 26 deputies, assigned to the SUMAR grouping.
• Republican Parliamentary Group in the Congress: 7 deputies, from Esquerra Republicana.
• Junts per Catalunya Parliamentary Group in the Congress: 7 deputies, from Junts per Catalunya.
• Basque Parliamentary Group in the Congress: 5 deputies, belonging to the PNV.
• Mixed Parliamentary Group in the Congress: several deputies from different small parties.

Which parties make up the Mixed Group?

The Mixed Parliamentary Group groups those formations that do not meet the numerical requirements to constitute their own group or that, by political decision, join it. According to the consulted data, it currently houses:

• Podemos: 4 deputies.
• Canarian Nationalist: 1 deputy.
• Compromís: 1 deputy.
• Navarrese People's Union: 1 deputy.
• Galician Nationalist: 1 deputy.

All of them are formally assigned to the Mixed Group, which functions as a “container” group with specific internal rules to distribute time and representation among its different member parties.

Political reading of the distribution

From a political point of view, the XV Legislature is characterized by high fragmentation, but with two large blocks: the Popular Party and PSOE regroup most seats, while Vox and Sumar complete the picture of the major state forces. In governance, territorially scoped parties (Esquerra Republicana, Junts per Catalunya, PNV, and the smaller formations of the Mixed Group) are often decisive partners for investiture or legislative processing. No further detail is available in the sources about specific investiture or governance agreements, but the arithmetic of seats places these formations in a key position to reach absolute majorities in the Congress.