The vote of the working class demands a first clarification: a survey can group citizens by their job, by their income, or by the social class they say they belong to. The three classifications offer different information.
The analysis by DatosRTVE of the CIS pre-election survey uses, in its section on social class, the identification made by the interviewees themselves. In that cross-tabulation, the PSOE appears as the first option among those who consider themselves working class. PP and Vox stand at around 8% and 9%, respectively.
What the data show by social class
The same analysis indicates that Vox reaches approximately 20% among those who identify as lower class or poor, compared with 13% for PP. These are different groups within the classification used.
The difference prevents treating "working class" and "lower class" as interchangeable labels. The result changes depending on the category examined and the question the interviewee has answered.
Having a manual job and feeling working class is not the same thing
An industrial worker can identify as middle class. A retired person may continue to consider themselves working class even if they no longer have a paid occupation.
These examples show why it is not possible to automatically transform a response about social identity into a statement about all the workers in a country. To know the preferences of a professional group, the corresponding cross-tabulation by occupation is needed.
It is also necessary to decide who is included: qualified manual workers, unqualified workers, service employees, unemployed people with previous occupation, or people who are already retired. Changing that definition changes the universe that is analyzed.
| Declared group | PSOE | PP | Vox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Working class | First option in the consulted analysis | Around 8% | Around 9% |
| Lower class or poor | First option in the consulted analysis | Around 13% | Around 20% |
Source: DatosRTVE analysis of the CIS pre-election survey, published on 14 November 2026. Percentages rounded. Declared social class, not professional occupation. PSOE percentages that do not appear detailed in the consulted text are not reproduced.
Why an workers’ neighborhood does not demonstrate the vote of each worker
The electoral results of a neighborhood describe the ballots deposited in a territory. They do not identify the profession of the person who cast each vote.
If a party wins in a low-rent area, it can be said that it obtains there the best result. From that information alone, it cannot be deduced that it was the first choice among resident manual workers.
In the same neighborhood live wage earners, the self-employed, pensioners, the unemployed, and people with different incomes. Attributing to each individual the behavior of the whole confuses two levels of analysis.
Votes within a group and composition of the electorate
Another distinction affects the denominator of the percentages. Asking which party the members of a social group prefer is not the same as asking what proportion of a party's voters belong to that group.
A hypothetical example makes it clear. A formation can obtain a high percentage among a small group and, even so, receive the majority of its votes from other, more numerous groups.
That is why saying that a party has many worker voters does not, by itself, prove that it is the most voted for among workers. To support that second conclusion, all candidacies must be compared within the same group.
What is missing to establish a winner by occupation
The cross by social class makes it possible to describe the preferences of those who choose that label. To publish a national classification of the vote by profession it is necessary to recover the occupation table, check the electoral question used, and know the base of each subgroup.
Intention to vote must also be distinguished from electoral outcome. A survey collects responses during its fieldwork; it does not count ballots that have already been cast.
With the recovered data, the publishable conclusion is limited to the declared social class. They do not allow assigning a national winner to all manual workers nor measuring, on their own, how each profession votes.