Spanish don't want election re-run - poll

Less than one third of Spaniards want a re-run of last Sunday's election, which resulted in a stalemate, with two-thirds favouring a pact between parties, a poll showed on Thursday.

Just seven percent of those surveyed said they would change their votes in a fresh election, while 87.1 percent said they would vote the same way.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative People's Party (PP) won the most votes in Sunday's election but lost its parliamentary majority, with the opposition Socialists (PSOE) in second place.

Both lost ground to newcomers, the liberal Ciudadanos and left-wing Podemos.

Only 1.4 percent of PP supporters would change their vote in a new election while 6.8 percent of those who backed the PSOE would vote for a different party, the poll showed.

Of those surveyed, 27 percent said they would prefer to see Rajoy remain as prime minister while 26 percent said Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias should replace him.

The poll of 1,200 people was carried out on Monday and Tuesday by Invymark for the television channel La Sexta.

In his traditional Christmas address to the nation, King Felipe called for tolerance of political diversity.

The monarch, whose approval ratings are far higher than any politician's, warned of the dangers of one group imposing its ideas on others.

"(This) has only led us historically to decadence, impoverishment and isolation. This is an error of our past which we must not commit again," he said, in an apparent reference to Spain's 1939-1975 Francoist dictatorship.

King Felipe called for economic growth which provides "dignified work ... and allows inequalities, accentuated by the depth of the economic crisis, to be reduced."