Voters in Spain will go to the polls on Sunday in an election that could see the populist right take power after five years under a left-wing Government.
Opinion polls indicate that both the right-of-centre Popular Party (PP) has the edge going into the election, raising the possibility that the extreme right Vox party could be part of Spain’s next Government.
No party is expected to win an absolute majority, pollsters forecast, though PP is predicted to win a larger share of votes than Pedro Sanchez’s ruling Socialists (PSOE).
Polls will open at 9am on Sunday and close at 8pm, when the exit polls will be released.
More than 37.4 million Spaniards are registered to vote, including 2.3 million abroad and 1.6 million for the first time. At least 2.5 million have registered to cast ballots by post.
Experts said the result was expected to be decided by less than a million votes.
To secure the majority of the 350 seats that it needs a form a Government, the PP is predicted to have to ally with Vox, giving the extreme right a role in Government for the first time since the end of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in 1975.
Polls suggest the PP will win just over a third of votes and the PSOE just under a third.
The formation of a Government could depend on complex negotiations that could take weeks or months and may even end in fresh elections.
King Felipe VI will begin meeting party leaders soon after to hear their pitches, and must then put forward a candidate for prime minister.
PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo has focused his campaign on attacking Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's own political deals.
Mr Sánchez called the early election a day after his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and its small far-left coalition partner, Unidas Podemos (United We Can), took a hammering in local and regional elections on May 28.
Mr Sanchez had insisted he would ride out his four-year term, indicating that an election would be held in December.
