Home > 2.2 Polling station > SPAIN - Representation of the People Institutional Act
 
 
 
Download file    
 
 
Article 69
 

Election opinion polls


Publication of election opinion polls between the date of call of the election and the polling day shall be subject to the following rules:


1. Persons taking opinion samples or conducting election opinion polls shall under their responsibility append the following specifications, including any publication thereof:



a) Name and place of residence of the body, public o private entity or individual who has conducted the poll, as well as of the body or person having commissioned it. 
b) Technical characteristics of the poll, which shall necessarily include the following particulars: sampling system, size of the sample, margin of error, representativity level, procedure for selection of surveyed persons and date of performance of the field work.
c) Full text of questions asked and number of persons who did not answer each of them.



2. The Central Electoral Commission shall ensure that the data and information published on surveys do not contain any deliberate falsification, concealment or alteration, as well as strict compliance with the specifications referred to in the preceding paragraph and respect of the prohibition imposed by subsection 7 of this present section.



3. The Central Electoral Commission may dircte any person who has carried out a survey opinion poll made public, to furnish them with the additional technical information they see fit in order to carry out the verifications they may deem necessary.
Provided that this information may not include the contents of data relating to the questions that under the legislation in force are for the firms or the client’s private use.



4. Communications media who have published or divulged an opinion poll in violation of the present Act, shall make public and disseminate within three days the rectifications required by the Central Electoral Commission, with the indication of their origin and of the cause of rectification. Publication shall be made or programmed in the same spaces or pages as the rectified information.



5. Where the sampling or the survey to be modified has been disseminated in a publication whose periodical nature makes rectification within the following three days impossible, the editor shall cause it to be published at the publication’s expense with an indication of said impediment within the aforesaid term in another medium of the same area and with a similar circulation.



6. Central Electoral Commission’s decisions on opinion polls and surveys shall be notified to the persons concerned and made public. There shall be a right of appeal against them before administrative courts in the manner prescribed by the Administrative Jurisdiction Act. Provided that there shall be no obligation to lodge a preliminary revocation request (recurso de reposición) before the Commission itself.


7. Publication and dissemination or reproduction of electoral opinion polls shall be strictly prohibited during the five days preceding the polling day.



8. Where any department of Public Administration conducts during the election period opinion polls on voting intentions, the results, if so requested, shall be made known within fourty-eight hours from said request to all political formations taking part in the election in the area covered by
the opinion poll.



 7. AMENDED BY SECT. 26 OF INSTITUTIONAL ACT 2/2011, JANUARY 28
 8. ADDED BY SECT. 21 OF INSTITUTIONAL ACT 8/1991, OF MARCH 13