It has not been a good campaign. The two big parties, knowing each other in the prologue of the generals, wanted to win and leave their opponent touched. He PSOE, worn out by the inconsistencies of the pact with Podemos -with a fight between Yolanda Díaz and Pablo Iglesias- launched a campaign to unite and mobilize the left: a housing law that they had not been able to agree on in three years and that sacrifices rigor to the easy proposals. He prioritizes price control -which does not work- before the demand that rents stop rising.
And he added promises such as increasing social services and equality. For example, that 40% of the members of the General Council of the Judiciary and the Constitutional Power be women. Ok, but it is not very logical in a campaign against the PP, since the Constitution requires – and during the legislature it has not been achieved – an agreement between the two big parties.
And the PP, when he saw that the economy was not sinking (the CEOE has just raised the GDP forecast in 2023 from 1.3 to 1.9%), he has responded by agitating everything he could against the PSOE. accusing him of inadmissible complicity when it became known that in Bildu’s lists there were 44 convicted of terrorism. The PP stressed that the housing law was built on Hipercor since it was agreed with Bildu. And Ayuso has asked to make Bildu illegal, as Aznar did with Batasuna, but when ETA existed and murdered.
The PP could not be shipwrecked by Sánchez’s promises that followed the increases in the minimum wage and the pension agreement with the unions and has resorted to everything that could go well to weaken the PSOE and repeal sanchismo. He also did not want to leave a space to his right that would feed vox. And we will see the future of Yolanda Diaz with its hybrid campaign: supporting Héctor Illueca, candidate of Podemos, in the Valencian autonomous communities, so that he reaches 5% and saves the Botanical pact, and in the municipal ones, the mayor Ribó, so that Compromís retains the mayoralty of Valencia.
The result in the communities of Madrid and Valencia and in the city councils of Barcelona and Seville will be observed with special attention because they will indicate the forces before the general elections in December
The campaign has been bad has further separated the two major parties and has ended in accusations of vote buying, with the PSOE receiving lashes for Mojácar, Melilla and the accusation against number three of the Andalusian party of having urged the kidnapping of a socialist councilor. Sánchez’s campaign has been long.
We will see the results. It seems probable that -contrary to what the CIS predicts- in the overall calculation the PP will come first. If only because of the wear and tear of the ‘Frankenstein Government’ and the sum of the votes that in 2019 went to Cs. The crux is in the amount of the difference. Two points would be a victory for the PP, more than five a socialist debacle.
And then there are the emblems. If the PSOE maintains the Seville mayor’s office You will have set a limit. Opposite case, Moreno Bonilla the reconquest of a territory lost by the right in the Andalusian elections of 1981 will have been completed. The PP will have a great victory in Madridwhere Isabel Diaz Ayuso it can consolidate itself as a factual power with a future. And in Murcia. But, what will happen in the other nine communities -among them Aragón, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha and Valencia- in the hands of the PSOE?
Perhaps a key is Valencian Community. It is the most populated of those in dispute, until 2015 it was the PP and Ximo Puig He is a realist socialist who leans on the left (Compromís and a Podemos with less weight than in Madrid), but he has not fallen into the drifts of Sánchez. The latest poll by Prensa Ibérica says that Puig, even by the minimum, can win again. And his message -politics is to reconcile interests, not confront and twitch- opens a loophole to overcome bipolarization. Can something like this happen in a community like Aragón?
Related news
and then there is Barcelona. Collboni believes that he will arrive first and if he succeeds it will also be a victory for illa and to Sanchez. It would demonstrate that the deinflammation policy with Catalonia has allowed the PSC win the independence movement for the second time (Illa has already won the regional elections) and now also the populism of Ada Colau and Yolanda Diaz.
Sánchez is on the defensive and needs some victory. Feijóo look for a clear victory to take the highway of the generals. It has not been a good campaign, but in politics the results count. It’s time to wait for them.