General elections survey: Vox gains 1.1 points, the PSOE falls again and the PP expands its lead to almost 7 points, according to InvyMark

In the Spanish constitutional system, the calling of general elections is closely regulated, but the parliamentary procedures themselves are very limited: the central decision is an act of the Prime Minister and the King, not of the Congress or the Senate. Even so, the way in which that dissolution is reached and the subsequent deadlines depend on the specific case.

1. Early dissolution decided by the Prime Minister

This is the most common case. The fundamental steps are:

• Political decision of the Prime Minister: the Prime Minister, after deliberation by the Council of Ministers, decides to propose to the King the dissolution of the Congress, the Senate, or the Cortes Generales and the calling of general elections. This decision must respect certain constitutional limits (it cannot be adopted if a motion of censure is underway, during states of exception or siege, nor before one year has passed since the previous dissolution by this same means).
• Formal proposal to the King: the Prime Minister addresses the King and proposes the dissolution and the call. There is no prior debate or vote in the Congress or the Senate on this decision.
• Royal Decree of dissolution and call: the King signs the royal decree by which the chambers are dissolved and elections are called, which must be always countersigned by the Prime Minister. In a single text the following are included:
  • The dissolution of the Congress and the Senate (or of only one chamber, if so decided).
  • The date of the general elections.
• Publication in the BOE: the royal decree is published in the Official State Gazette. With that publication, the dissolution of the chambers takes effect and the electoral calendar established by the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG) begins.

In this scenario, the parliamentary procedures are reduced to the formal notification to the boards of the Congress and the Senate and the settlement of pending matters; but there is no agreement or vote by the chambers to authorize the dissolution.

2. Automatic call due to expiration of the four-year term

If no early dissolution has occurred, the term of the Congress expires four years after its election. The procedure is very similar:

• As the expiration date approaches, the Government must prepare the call for general elections.
• The King issues, at the proposal of the Prime Minister and with his countersignature, a royal decree that:
  • Declares the dissolution of the Congress (and, in practice, also of the Senate to renew both chambers).
  • Sets the date of the elections.
• The decree is published in the BOE and the Cortes are dissolved on that date.

Again, the Congress and the Senate do not deliberate or vote on the call; they simply complete their term and are dissolved by the corresponding royal decree.

3. Call after a failed investiture

This is the only case in which the role of the Congress directly conditions the obligation to call elections:

• Investiture sessions: after an election, the King proposes a candidate for the presidency of the Government; the Congress holds one or more investiture debates and votes. An absolute majority is required in the first vote and a simple majority in the second.
• Counting the two-month period: if no candidate obtains the confidence of the Congress, a period of two months from the first investiture vote opens. During that time, new investitures with other candidates may be held.
• Failure of all investitures: if those two months pass without any candidate being invested, the Constitution orders that the chambers be automatically dissolved.
• Royal Decree of dissolution and call: the King, this time without room for political discretion, must issue a royal decree that:
  • Declares the Congress and the Senate dissolved.
  • Calls general elections.
  The decree is also countersigned by the acting Prime Minister.

In this case, there is indeed intense prior parliamentary activity (the investiture debates and votes), but the decision to dissolve and call is still formalized in a royal decree by the King, not by plenary agreement.

4. Common deadlines from dissolution to the new legislature

Regardless of the dissolution route, the basic deadlines are always the same:

• Between dissolution and election day: the LOREG generally sets a period of about forty-something days (in practice, seven weeks) from the publication of the royal decree until election day. During this period, the phases of candidacy presentation, proclamation, electoral campaign, and reflection day take place.
• Constitution of the new Congress and new Senate: after the elections, the chambers must be constituted within a short period (in practice, about three weeks from the vote, as established by the royal decree itself and the LOREG). In the constitutive session, the boards are elected and the Cortes Generales are formally declared constituted.

From the constitution of the new Congress, the King can begin the round of consultations with parliamentary groups to propose a candidate for the presidency of the Government, thus opening a new parliamentary cycle.

Strictly speaking, the Regulations of the Congress of Deputies do not regulate the figure of a “president of the Popular Party in the Congress” as a specific office of the Chamber. What is regulated are the parliamentary groups and their spokespersons. Therefore, the “powers” of the president of the PP in the Congress are articulated on two levels: as party leader (internal powers, established by the PP statutes) and as a deputy who directs or influences the line of the Popular Parliamentary Group, whose functions are indeed linked to the Regulations.

1. General framework: the role of parliamentary groups

The Congress operates through the Plenary and bodies such as the Board, the Spokespersons' Board, committees, and the Permanent Deputation. According to an official note on the organization of the Chamber, the Spokespersons' Board is composed of the president of the Congress and the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups, and its main function is to approve, together with the Presidency, the agenda of the Plenary (Moncloa note on the Congress).

Parliamentary groups, including the Popular Group, are the basic units of political organization in the Chamber: they register initiatives, participate in committees, propose members for the Permanent Deputation, and receive economic and material resources. A piece from Demócrata notes that the Regulations provide that the Congress makes available to the groups the necessary material means and a fixed and variable subsidy depending on their members; the PP has even argued that these resources, speaking time, and presence in bodies should be assigned more strictly proportionally to the size of the group, emphasizing that its president “speaks on behalf of 137 deputies” and should not have the same time as spokespersons of small groups (Demócrata).

2. Political powers linked to the Popular Parliamentary Group

Within this framework, the president of the Popular Party in the Congress acts, de facto, as the main political reference of the Popular Parliamentary Group, even if the spokesperson role falls to another person. His powers are specified in:

• Guiding the political line of the group: sets priorities, strategy, and the PP's position in legislative debates and government oversight. This is reflected in the internal direction of the group (spokesperson, deputy spokespersons, general secretary, committee coordinators), which the press describes as the “team” that directs the work in the Chamber (Demócrata).
• Promoting the presentation of initiatives: although formally bills, non-law proposals, questions, or requests are registered in the name of the group or its deputies, the PP's political leadership decides which initiatives are prioritized and with what content, giving instructions to the group's structure.
• Defining the PP's position in working groups and committees: when the Popular Group participates in legislative working groups or committees, its leadership sets the negotiation line. An example is the Popular Group's formal complaint to the Board of the Congress for feeling excluded from the preparation of the Film Law report, arguing that this prevented it from exercising “the functions corresponding to this Group as a member of the Working Group” (Demócrata).
• Deciding the government oversight strategy: selects appearances to request, control questions, investigative initiatives, or jurisdictional conflicts that the group promotes in both Chambers. News reports show, for example, how the PP leadership instructs its groups to raise jurisdictional conflicts or motions defending their positions.

3. Role in the Spokespersons' Board and internal life of the Congress

Much of the institutional weight of the Popular Group is exercised through its spokesperson in the Spokespersons' Board. According to parliamentary explanations collected by Demócrata, if the Board “administers”, the Spokespersons' Board is the space where groups negotiate times, agenda, and allocation of speaking slots. The PP leader in the Congress, as the political head of the group, decides the line his spokesperson will defend in that negotiation.

Additionally, the Popular Group's leadership — under the authority of the party president — proposes the names that will occupy key positions: representatives in the Permanent Deputation, presidencies or spokespersons of committees, members in mixed bodies such as the Court of Auditors Commission, etc. Demócrata reports detail, for example, how the PP negotiates and distributes vice presidencies and secretariats in bodies such as the Permanent Deputation or committees, according to its numerical weight.

4. Relationship with the Popular Party statutes

The PP statutes determine internally what powers the party president has over its parliamentary groups: appointment or dismissal of spokespersons, approval of group leaderships, coordination between Congress, Senate, and European Parliament, etc. The party's internal press and reports from the PP National Congress show that the spokespersons in the Cortes are part of the party's steering committee and report to the National Congress (Demócrata).

In summary, the PP president does not have a formal power distinct from that of any deputy within the Congress Regulations, but, as party leader, he concentrates a very broad decision-making capacity over how the Popular Parliamentary Group uses the powers recognized by the Regulations: legislative initiative, oversight, agenda negotiation, resource allocation, and presence in all the Chamber's bodies.

In the last general elections held in Spain, which took place on July 23, 2023, the Popular Party (PP) was the most voted force nationwide. According to data collected from various electoral analysis pieces published afterwards, the PP obtained in those elections approximately 33.1 % of the valid votes cast and secured 137 seats in the Congress of Deputies.

Although the consulted news repeatedly cite the percentage and seats, not all detail the exact number of ballots received by the PP in absolute terms (votes counted one by one). What consistently appears is the combination of vote percentage and parliamentary representation, which are the two basic measures to assess a party's result in a general election.

Basic data of the PP's result on July 23, 2023

• Election date: July 23, 2023.
• Scope: General elections to the Congress of Deputies.
• Party: Popular Party (PP).
• Approximate vote percentage: 33.1 %.
• Seats won in Congress: 137 deputies.
• Absolute number of votes: the sources consulted mainly refer to the percentage (33.1 %) and the 137 seats; not all break down the data into exact votes, so here the result is presented in the terms most clearly and repeatedly recorded in the subsequent electoral analysis.

The figure of 33.1 % appears, for example, in the post-electoral analysis of Demócrata on the evolution of polls, where it is expressly stated that the PP “got 33.1 % on 23-J”. The same percentage and the reference to 137 deputies are repeated in various polling follow-up articles published throughout 2025 and 2026, which compare future estimates with the actual result achieved by the PP in those 2023 general elections.

Political significance of that result

The PP's performance on July 23 had several relevant consequences for the Spanish political system:

• Leading force in votes and seats: with 33.1 % and 137 deputies, the PP was ahead of the PSOE both in popular vote and parliamentary representation. The socialists remained around 31.7 % and 121 seats, according to the same analyses, so the difference in the Lower House was 16 deputies in favor of the PP.
• Strengthening of the right-wing bloc: combined with Vox's 33 seats, the PP's result led the right-wing bloc (PP+Vox, plus UPN in Navarra) to reach around 170 deputies, close but below the absolute majority set at 176 seats.
• No outright majority to govern: despite being the most voted list, the 137 seats were not enough for the PP to form a government alone, nor even with Vox's support did it reach a sufficient majority without counting on other formations.
• Reference point for the next legislature: many polls published after 2023 explicitly take that PP result (33.1 % and 137 seats) as a reference to measure whether Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party is above or below its “23-J benchmark” in various subsequent polling scenarios.

In summary, in the most recent general elections held to date in Spain (July 23, 2023), the Popular Party obtained approximately 33.1 % of the votes and 137 seats in the Congress, becoming the party with the largest parliamentary representation, although without achieving an absolute majority that would allow it to govern alone. The analyzed sources do not detail the raw number of ballots with the same precision, but they clearly agree on these two key indicators: vote percentage and seats.