It happened again

Two weeks ago, with the campaign already underway, I wrote on these pages that A.S Contrast the private preferences of citizens and political manifestations in the public sphere. In the public sphere, I would point not only to the media, but also to everyday conversations, to the presence of right-wing messages in the street and even to the many published opinion polls, which should be a tool for discovering, not shaping, private preferences.

An unbreathable climate was created as left-wing candidates were booed with the infamous cry of “¡Qué te vote Txapote!” Before the sympathetic and conniving gaze of Alberto Núñez Viejo, who refused to condemn the damned slogan (heard again at the PP command post on Genova Street Sunday night, as in the great occasions, remember “Pujol, dwarf, speaks Spanish!” from 1996). Over these past weeks, the People’s Party and Vox’s most venerable voters have provoked a poorly educated Civics and Democrat, starring in countless episodes of intolerance and dehumanization of the rival, intoxicated by the campaign of conservative media and convinced that it is impossible for anyone to support the left.

But in the private sphere this campaign of intimidation by the right has caused the opposite effect to that desired. As on other occasions in the past, the tension strategy led progressive voters to rebel, many of whom were indifferent or laid off. The People’s Party got them out of that state and brought back the anger and saga of voting for the left when it was a foregone conclusion for the right to win an outright majority in the public sphere. Interventions by Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, By calling on progressive citizens to feel proud of the coalition government and its policies and to respond fully to hateful messages from the right, they have been crucial to choosing left-wing voters not only to mobilize, but also to rally around the cunning of the right, building the “dog” myth. Sanx“.

But not only that: by turning the campaign around “sanchismo”, the vote of the left was concentrated in favor of the SWP. It is likely that in a less polarizing campaign, Addition will get better results. In this way, the strategy of tension, by favoring the PSOE to the detriment of Sumar, has reduced the gap between the PP and the PSOE, when the only way to achieve an absolute majority in Spain is to have a decisive difference between the first and the second party.

Although the differences in seats are large, as a result of an electoral system that still needs urgent reform, the differences in votes, which truly reflect the private preferences of citizens, are very small. With that previous campaign of revolutions, PP took only 1.5 points ahead of PSOE. Considered by blocks, the Spanish right, PP and Vox, gives 45.5%, compared to the left formed by PSOE and Sumar, with 44% (a percentage very similar to that recorded in the 2019 and 2015 elections). If the nationalist parties on the left (Bildu, ERC, BNG) are taken into account, the left continues to add more votes than the right.

PP has entered a labyrinth, and it has no ally but Vox. For this reason, everything that is not an absolute majority of the parties is useless. Some will try to get PP out of said maze by pressing PSOE to allow PP rule as the only unlocking mode. With a normal right-wing party accepting pluralism and diversity in Spain, something like this would not be impossible. But with a PP that has no other program than “abolish sanchismo” and which judges half of Spanish citizens to be anti-Spanish, all those who don’t vote for the People’s Party or the Vox party, does it make sense to propose something like that? How can PP ask PSOE to cooperate with presenting the left as a danger to the nation and Pedro Sánchez as an evil figure willing to stay in power even if he has to get rid of Spain? The People’s Party is likely to try again, increasing the dose of tension and exclusion, with Isabel Diaz Ayuso as the candidate.