TWO POINTS with a 3.1% margin of error, that's how narrow is Zapatero's lead at the moment, according to a survey that not even SER radio -a part of the PRISA media group which is the virtual house organ of the Socialist party- could put much makeup on. He even doesn't seem to have the incumbent effect anymore.

Being between a rock and a hard place in the federal/devolution tensions -he doesn't want to seem to be giving in to the ultranationalists who are threatening him to withdraw the vital support he needs to pass laws, which would prompt an early election- and with the situation heating really up in Ceuta and Melilla (the Spanish cities in Northern Africa; see previous posts), Zapatero can probably expect that difference to diminish, or even vanish altogether.

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