Tezanos' CIS poll gives PSOE an absolute majority in Ceuta for Spain's 29N elections

The CIS, headed by José Félix Tezanos, attributes 150 seats and an absolute majority in Ceuta to the PSOE ahead of Spain's 29N elections. The sociological reading of the figure points to the weight of public spending and subsidies in the vote.

The survey by Spain's Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS, the state sociological research institute), dated 14 October 2026, attributes a result of **150 seats** and a hypothetical absolute majority in **Ceuta** to the PSOE ahead of the **29N** elections. The figure, signed off by the body headed by **José Félix Tezanos**, reopens the debate over what really moves the electorate when the state is the main breadwinner.

## Voting when your paycheck comes from the state

There is a strand of sociological analysis that has been saying the same thing for decades: people do not vote only with their ideology, they vote with their wallet. When a significant part of the population depends on public transfers, benefits, subsidies or a state job, any change of government is read as a risk to tomorrow's income. It is not cynicism, it is household arithmetic.

That materialist reading of political behaviour holds that the electoral decision responds to a practical assessment of which party guarantees the continuity of those resources. In environments where the state is the main distributive engine, the incentive to back whoever is in government grows. Cultural identity or a sense of belonging are still there, but they compete with the payslip.

## Ceuta, the laboratory of the subsidy

Ceuta fits neatly into that scheme. Its private sector is limited and conditioned by geography and the border. Public employment, local job schemes and the social assistance network are the main means of subsistence for many families. In a place like this, individual financial stability outweighs almost any other debate.

For a broad section of the population, the priority when casting a vote is preserving the mechanisms of social protection and direct public investment. The poll projects that this translates into an absolute majority. Community cohesion and rootedness explain part of the vote, but the household's economic arithmetic explains another part.

## The CIS methodology, always in the spotlight

The CIS's estimates carry a recurring debate about its methodology and about how it translates voting intention into seats. The inner workings of a poll are not neutral: the sample, the weighting and the estimation of seat allocation by province all move the final result. A poll is not a ballot box.

The factors that the sociological reading itself points to are three: public spending consolidates support in the areas that depend on state redistribution; material interest puts income and subsidies ahead of other debates; and the mobilisation of the sector tied to the administration raises turnout among those with something to lose from a change. With those pieces in place, 150 seats stops being a mystery and becomes a hypothesis with an internal logic.

It is worth remembering that a poll is a snapshot, not a result. The ballot boxes on 29N will tell whether that economic arithmetic weighed as heavily as the CIS suggests.