New poll today.

Antena 3 TV and Onda Cero radio published a joint poll yesterday. Both media outlets are owned by the same centre-right media conglomerate so their poll could help us balance out the left-leaning polling we saw on Monday from Publico and Cadena Ser.

The poll shows that if the election were held today, PSOE would win with 42% of the vote, 0.6% less than in the 2004 elections. PP will get 38.2% of the vote, 0.5% more than in 2004. The same poll shows ERC, the Catalan nationalist party, going down losing almost 1% of its share while IU would go up and the rest of the parties remain the same.

The results aren't very specific so cannot really anlyse that much further. The result stays within my personal margin of error, almost 4 points difference before the official campaign starts, which shows PSOE is in good shape even after the bumpy ride of the last month. Being a conservative-leaning poll I would say it's good news overall, people are talking about election day but many still need to make up their mind yet and those are the ones that count.

One piece of great news in this poll is the fact that when asked which party voters think can deal better with terrorism and ETA, PSOE comes first with 35.6% and PP trailing with 31.8%. This, and I was surprised, deconstructs the idea that conservative parties are perceived to be more able to deal with national security than left-wing ones, at least in Spain that is. Also terrorism is one of the key issues PP has been campaigning on which this poll shows might not bring home that many votes after all.

Too early to pick a winning horse yet, but things are looking good for Zapatero. It's now important to make sure Socialist voters understand that they will only remain the same if they come out to campaign and to vote, that's PSOE's key task in the four months remaining to election day.