Spanish centre-right seen winning by landslide: poll

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's center-right People's Party (PP) will gain a landslide victory and control of parliament in a November 20 election because voters blame the Socialist government for the dire state of the economy, an opinion poll showed on Friday.

The PP would win between 190 and 195 seats in the lower house, compared with the 176 needed for a full majority. The Socialists would win 116 to 121 seats, the survey by the government's Center for Sociological Research (CIS) said.

Those figures are the equivalent of 46.6 percent of votes for the PP, giving it a lead of nearly 17 points, the widest so far in the campaign.

Voters are angry at the ruling Socialists' failure to deal with a stagnant economy and the EU's highest unemployment rate of 21.5 pct, and consider the PP is more likely to create jobs than its rival.

On Friday, weak September industrial output data did little to calm fears that Spain may be about to re-enter recession.

The CIS poll showed more than 75 percent of Spaniards believe the Socialists have done a bad or very bad job managing employment, with that figure rising to 78 percent when measuring performance on the economy overall.

"While the PP's ... electoral program lacks detail, a right-wing government would probably implement tough austerity measures and structural reforms that would generate considerable social discontent," wrote Antonio Barroso, analyst with Eurasia Group consulting firm, ahead of the publication of the CIS poll.

The CIS survey compares with a Sigma Dos poll published in right-leaning daily El Mundo last weekend giving the PP a lead of 14.8 percentage points.

Pollster Metroscopia estimated the PP were 15 points ahead in a separate survey published in center-left daily El Pais.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's party has implemented unpopular austerity measures aimed at helping Spain dodge a euro zone bailout, after those of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, but many investors consider the policies have not gone far enough.

The key question will be whether Spaniards will be willing to accept austerity if it leaves treasured welfare services intact and creates jobs.

"I'm going to take the scissors to everything except public pensions, (...) health and education, where I don't want to reduce citizens' rights. We have to do it and Spaniards have to know, and in fact they do know," PP leader Mariano Rajoy told Punto Radio in an interview on Friday.

Although the poll shows a PP win as almost inevitable, it also showed most voters believe the party has done a bad or a very bad job as an opposition party.

The widely respected CIS poll held face-to-face interviews from October 6-23 with more than 17,000 adults. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 0.76 percent.

(Reporting By Elisabeth O'Leary; Editing by Robert Woodward)