MADRID, June 26 (Xinhua) -- The People's Party of acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy won the most seats in the general election on Sunday, preliminary results have showed.
With 95 percent of votes counted, the party won 32.9 percent of the votes, which translated into 137 seats in Spain's 350-seat Congress, 14 more than the number of seats it secured in the previous election in December 2015.
The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) finished second, a surprise given that opinion polls during the campaign and exit polls on Sunday had predicted them to drop into third place behind Unidos Podemos.
The PSOE won 22.77 percent of the votes to claim 85 seats, five less than that of the previous election.
Meanwhile, Unidos Podemos, which had been predicted to finish second in the election by an exit poll, won 21.13 percent of the votes and claimed 71 seats.
It will still be difficult for Rajoy to form a coalition government given that center-right party Ciudadanos lost ground on Sunday. The party led by Albert Rivera saw how voters abandoned them to vote for the PP. Rivera's group polled 12.94 percent of the votes and lost 8 seats to the PP.
The political balance in Spain has not fundamentally changed after the latest election. Despite the PP gained more support than they did during the last election, a coalition between the party and Ciudadanos would only give them a total of 169 seats, seven short of an overall majority, while a "progressive" pact between the PSOE and Podemos would leave them with a total of 156 seats.
The Catalan nationalist party Ezquerra Republicana won nine seats, the same as in December, while Democratic Convergence of Cataluna (CDC) claimed eight seats, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) five Bildu two and the Canary Island Coalition one.
It is hard to imagine any nationalist party wanting to form a post-electoral pact with Rajoy, whose best hope for forming a government could well be to persuade the PSOE to abstain in a future vote.
The final turnout at the polls was 69.8 percent, up 0.11 percent compared with that of the previous election.
