Politics · 2026-10-11 · 12 min read · By Vsevolod

Next Prime Minister of Spain 2026 Odds & Analysis

Where the Spain Prime Minister Market Stands

Spain is going to the polls early. On October 5, 2026, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced a snap general election for November 29, three days after Congress voted down two of his government's housing decrees. The Cortes were formally dissolved by a decree published on October 6, and the new chambers are scheduled to convene on December 23. The prediction market odds on Spain's next prime minister had already picked a favorite before any of this happened, and the snap election has not changed the order. As of October 2026, Popular Party (PP) leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo trades at 80.5%, Sánchez at 16.8%, Vox leader Santiago Abascal at 1.7%, Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso at 1.1%, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carlos Cuerpo at 0.6%. Everyone else on the board is priced at 0.15% or lower. If you want to take a leveraged position on a specific outcome in this race, PredMart lets you trade it with up to 4x leverage.

The most important thing about this market is not Feijóo's price level. It is how stable it has been. Since early July, his contract has stayed in a band of roughly 73.5% to 83%. It barely moved on the corruption verdicts or the Ceuta migration crisis, and its sharpest dip, to about 73.5% on the night the housing decrees failed, was recovered within days. Most of the movement on the board has been underneath him: Sánchez's contract jumped, and the long-shot paths to someone other than Feijóo or Sánchez collapsed. Traders have spent the summer arguing about how likely an upset is, not about who leads.

How the market resolves matters. It pays out on the next person who formally assumes the office of Prime Minister of Spain by March 31, 2028. That person has to win a confidence vote in the Congress of Deputies and be sworn in. A caretaker prime minister who never wins that vote does not count, and if nobody takes office by the deadline, the market resolves to "Other." Sánchez's 16.8% price shows that traders count a fresh Sánchez investiture after November 29 as a qualifying outcome. In practice, this is a market on who wins the post-election investiture vote. That is not the same as who wins the most seats, and Spain's last election showed the difference.

Front-Runner: Feijóo and the Arithmetic of 176

Feijóo's 80.5% rests on one number: 176, the absolute majority in the 350-seat Congress. Almost every published poll since the election was called projects the PP and Vox together above that line, and most project them well above it.

The first major poll after the announcement came from 40dB for El País and Cadena SER. It put the PP at 31.9% and the PSOE at 28.1%, with Vox at 18.9%, which translates into ranges of 123 to 140 seats for the PP, 105 to 117 for the PSOE and 63 to 74 for Vox. Even the bottom of those ranges puts the two right-wing parties above 176. Reuters, reporting the poll on October 9, noted that the PSOE would drop from the 121 seats it won in 2023. An IMOP poll for El Confidencial put the PP at 130 seats and Vox at 70, a combined 200. SocioMétrica's survey for El Español (fieldwork October 1-3) gave the PP 143 seats and Vox 62, a combined 205. Sigma Dos for El Mundo projected 140 and 63 seats, for 203. An Instituto DYM poll for Henneo (fieldwork October 5-7) projected the PP at 139-143 seats and Vox at 61-65, a combined total of up to 208. It also concluded that Sánchez could not reach a majority even if every other party backed him. Spanish academic Pablo Simón of Universidad Carlos III told Time that it is "widely assumed" the right-wing bloc will win an absolute majority.

One survey points the other way: the government-run CIS. Its housing barometer, released on October 8, puts the PSOE first under every one of its three raw vote measures. Among respondents who named a party, the PSOE has 32.3%, the PP 23.3% and Vox 14.3%. The CIS itself says these figures are not a seat estimate, and private pollsters have long criticized its methodology. Still, the release came on the same day the Sánchez contract briefly traded above 24%, which shows how sensitive the No side of the favorite is to any poll that breaks from the pack.

Compare this with 2023. That July, the PP finished first with 137 seats, and Vox won 33. In September, Feijóo went to an investiture vote and lost twice, 172-178 and then 172-177, because his only support beyond the PP came from Vox, Unión del Pueblo Navarro and Coalición Canaria. Sánchez was re-invested on November 16, 2023 with 179 votes, thanks to Sumar, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, the PNV, the BNG and Coalición Canaria. Winning the most seats is not enough. What matters is whether the right-wing bloc clears 176 by itself. In 2023 it fell four seats short. The current polls have it roughly 20 to 35 seats clear.

That margin is the core of the Feijóo case. The central PP-plus-Vox estimates in the October polls sit between roughly 197 and 212. For Sánchez to have another path, the right would have to lose about 25 seats in seven weeks, or Vox and the PP would have to fail to agree after winning.

The second risk is the one the market is really pricing in the 19.5 points it gives to outcomes other than Feijóo. Vox no longer offers outside support for free. On October 5, Abascal set out three conditions for cooperating with the PP: "national priority" for Spaniards in access to public resources, economic deregulation, and "remigration." He also said Vox voters want the party in a future government with ministries. Feijóo has said he is open to a coalition but has not publicly accepted those terms. There is regional precedent for a deal. In Andalusia, Juanma Moreno lost his absolute majority in the May 17 regional election, winning 53 of 109 seats. He failed a first investiture vote on June 30 with only the PP's 53 votes, then was re-invested on July 2 with 68 votes after Vox's 15 deputies switched to yes. That is the template the market is betting on.

For a trader who agrees with the consensus, the math is simple. Feijóo at 80.5 cents pays at most about 24% if he takes office. At 4x leverage, that becomes a gain of almost 100% on margin, at the cost of a position that cannot absorb a sudden repricing of the type the CIS release caused.

Biggest Mover: Sánchez and the Housing Gamble

The biggest mover on the board is Sánchez, and the catalyst is easy to pin down. Through September, his contract traded between roughly 10% and 15%. It had been as low as about 9% in early August, after the Ceuta crisis, when tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco on July 30-31.

The repricing started on October 1, when it became clear that Junts would vote against the housing decrees. On Friday, October 2, Congress rejected the first decree, which contained most of the package, by 178 votes to 172. The PP, Vox, UPN and Junts voted against. The second decree, which covered automatic renewal of rental contracts, failed by 184 votes to 166 after the PNV and Coalición Canaria also voted no. Junts deputy Míriam Nogueras argued that the measures would push owners to take homes off the rental market and drive prices up further. The decrees had been the government's answer to a wave of public anger after the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid. The government said more than 70,000 people joined a housing protest in the capital.

Sánchez spent the weekend consulting his ministers and then went on television on Monday. He admitted mistakes and said part of the "social majority" that elected him was "dissatisfied today," but called for a "much larger progressive majority" to overcome "vested interests." Feijóo described the vote as a choice between "four more years" and "change."

The market treated the decision as a gamble with some upside. The Sánchez contract spiked to 22.5% on the night of the decree vote and reached about 25.6% in intraday trading on the day of the announcement. It traded above 24% again on October 8 when the CIS barometer came out, and it has since settled at around 16.8%. That leaves it a couple of points above the top of its September range, with much bigger swings than it had all summer. The reasoning for buying it is that housing could change the shape of the electorate. The CIS found that 76% of Spaniards want the state to intervene in the housing market "as much as necessary." DYM's poll ranked housing as voters' top concern at 22.4%, ahead of immigration at 14.3%, the economy at 11.5% and corruption at 10.7%. Simón told Time that the issue could help Sánchez reach "younger voters, renters and voters in large cities," but he also doubted that it would decide how people vote.

This contract has been volatile. The move from about 14% in late September to the 25.6% intraday high was an 80% move in the contract, enough to roughly quadruple a 4x position. The fall back to 16.8% was a drop of about a third, which would have liquidated that same position on the way down.

The case against Sánchez is just as specific. In June, the Supreme Court sentenced his former transport minister José Luis Ábalos to more than 24 years in prison in the Koldo case, the corruption investigation linked to pandemic-era mask contracts. Sánchez has not been named in the case and denies any link to party finances. His brother David has faced a separate judicial case, and in July a Madrid court confirmed that his wife Begoña Gómez will stand trial on influence-peddling and embezzlement charges. On the left, Sumar is losing support. El País found that this "severely limits" the Socialists' options, and the parties of the new Frente Amplio (Broad Front) platform will not even name their candidate until October 17. Yolanda Díaz, Sumar's 2023 leader, said in February that she would not stand again. Sánchez's re-investiture in 2023 also depended on Junts, the party whose votes brought down his housing decrees.

The Rest of the Field: Where the Long Shots Went

The most revealing development below the top two is not a rally but a collapse. Before the election was called, two contracts held meaningful value as alternatives inside the right-wing bloc. Abascal traded between roughly 4% and 5.5% through late September, having spiked to about 11% at the height of the Ceuta crisis at the end of July. Ayuso traded between about 2% and 5.5% in the second half of September. Both fell sharply between October 1 and October 6. Abascal dropped as low as 0.15% before recovering to 1.7%, and Ayuso fell to 0.15% before bouncing to 1.1% today.

The reason is the timetable. An election in seven weeks with Feijóo as the PP's candidate leaves almost no room for a leadership change on the right before the vote. The Ayuso scenario needed a long, damaging pre-election period in which the PP replaced its leader. The Abascal scenario needs Vox to beat the PP or the PP to back a Vox prime minister. Every October poll has Vox between about 18% and 19.6%, roughly 12 to 16 points behind the PP. Ayuso is still part of the campaign story, but not as a candidate. After the election was called, she and Aragón's regional president Jorge Azcón questioned postal voting and urged people to vote in person, as Vox figures also cast doubt on mail-in ballots. The government called postal voting "a right that has been exercised for years," and PP national spokesperson Borja Sémper said the system was protected by "a series of controls," which shows the issue has split the PP. None of this gives Ayuso a realistic path to the premiership before the market's deadline. At 1.1%, her contract mainly prices a scenario where Feijóo wins and then fails, followed by a long investiture deadlock and a leadership switch, all before March 2028.

Cuerpo at 0.6% is the only Socialist other than Sánchez with a non-trivial price. He became First Deputy Prime Minister in March 2026, replacing María Jesús Montero after she left to lead the PSOE ticket in Andalusia, and he is also economy minister. His contract is a hedge on the scenario where the left can form a government but Sánchez cannot be its candidate, for example if partners such as Junts made him personally unacceptable in a hung parliament. Montero herself trades at about 0.1%. Transport minister Óscar Puente and Yolanda Díaz each trade at 0.15%. Díaz's price is hard to justify as a path to the premiership, since she has ruled herself out as a general election candidate.

The remaining contracts, including PP figures Miguel Tellado, Cuca Gamarra, Ester Muñoz and Borja Sémper, Vox's Pepa Millán, the PNV's Aitor Esteban, Sumar's Ernest Urtasun and Junts' Carles Puigdemont, all trade at around 0.1% or below. Most of these markets have had little or no trading in the past day.

The No side of Feijóo is the only real alternative to the favorite. Sánchez and the minor contracts together add up to roughly 20%. That is about what an upset scenario deserves when polls consistently put the right more than 20 seats over the line, seven weeks out, in a country where several 2023 polls also projected a right-wing majority that did not materialize.

Catalysts: The Windows That Will Reprice the Board

October 17 is the first scheduled event: the launch of the Frente Amplio platform and its candidate. Electoral alliances must be registered by October 16, candidate lists are due on October 26, and the valid lists are proclaimed on November 2. A united left ticket would matter more for Sánchez's investiture math than any single PSOE poll, because Spain's D'Hondt system penalizes a split vote in smaller provinces. Watch which left-wing parties end up on the same ballot and which run separately.

The second window is the televised debates. Broadcasters have issued invitations for several debates in the second half of November, including Feijóo-Sánchez head-to-heads on RTVE, Atresmedia and Mediaset and three-way debates that add Abascal, with proposed dates between November 17 and November 26. The final schedule had not been agreed by all the parties as of this writing. Debates are where the Sánchez contract is most likely to spike, as it did on October 5 and 8.

The third window is the steady flow of polls. Spanish law bans publishing polls in the final days before the vote, so most of the last polling data comes out in the week before. The key number to watch is the right-wing bloc's projected total. Readings consistently above 190 support the 80% price. Any cluster of polls nearer 176 would make the Sánchez contract the most interesting on the board.

Then comes election night, November 29. If the PP-Vox total clears 176, the market will move most of the way toward Feijóo at once. If it falls short, the board will turn into an investiture negotiation in which Junts, the PNV and Coalición Canaria decide the outcome.

The final window is the investiture itself. The new Cortes convene on December 23, after which the King holds consultations and proposes a candidate. Under Article 99 of the Constitution, if no candidate wins a confidence vote within two months of the first ballot, the chambers are dissolved and a new election is held. That is the scenario that tests the market's March 31, 2028 deadline. In 2019, Spain needed two elections in one year before a government took office in January 2020. Even if this cycle repeats that pattern, a government would very likely be in office before the deadline, so the "Other" outcome is a small risk.

Bottom Line

Prediction markets see Spain's next prime minister as Feijóo's to lose, and the polling backs that up. The October polls put the PP and Vox combined at central estimates of roughly 197 to 212 seats, far above the 176-seat bar Feijóo missed by four seats in 2023. His price has held at roughly 73.5% to 83% for three months, through news that could have shaken a weaker consensus. The main threat to him is not the PSOE. It is the gap between a PP-Vox majority and an actual PP-Vox agreement, given that Abascal has publicly demanded ministries, "national priority" and "remigration." Vox's votes for Moreno's re-investiture in Andalusia suggest that gap gets closed, and the market prices it that way.

Our read is that the 80.5% is about right, possibly slightly low, given how far the bloc sits above the majority line. Sánchez at 16.8% is a bet on the housing issue reshaping turnout in seven weeks, and the polls so far show it moving voters within the left rather than across blocs. The long-shot contracts below 2% mostly reflect the time left before the deadline, not live paths to office. The setup to watch is the debate window in mid-to-late November, when the Sánchez contract has the most room to swing in either direction. That is the kind of move a leveraged position on either side of the Feijóo-Sánchez spread is built for, as long as it is sized for the volatility this market showed in its first week of campaigning.

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