More of 6.6 million Andalusians They decide tomorrow, Sunday, the political future of the community in the twelfth regional elections since 1982. In 11 of these elections the PSOE has won, in five with an absolute majority, in six with the possibility of agreements to remain in the Junta de Andalucía. The change of government came four years ago but the change in Andalusian societyto convert to PP in the majority party and the middle classes, can arrive this Sunday. Juan Manuel Moreno, PP candidate, hopes to sign a “historic & rdquor ; day this June 19. He arrives with the wind in his favor and unanimity in the polls for a resounding victory. The big unknown is whether may form a government alone or It will depend on Vox. A coalition with the extreme right would undoubtedly mark the path of the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in his race to Moncloa.
The count of the polls this Sunday will tell if it is fantasy or reality, but the PP has ridden the last week of the campaign on the idea that “the mythical figure & rdquor; of the 55 deputies, an absolute majority, is within reach. Although he is missing a single vote, Vox has made it clear that he will not give it away for free and wants to enter the Government. Despite an erratic campaign and a prick in expectations, Macarena Olona has not stopped repeating that she is in Andalusia to enter the Executive. In 2018, Vox broke into Spanish institutions for the first time with 12 deputies in the Andalusian Parliament. That’s where it all started and in the Junta de Andalucía, despite being a party that does not believe in the State of Autonomies, they want to cement the idea that they are not an ultra party but a management party and that they can reach the Government of Spain.
Transfer of socialist votes
Moreno knew before calling elections in Andalusia that his biggest electoral rival was Vox. In the last generals this party gave the ‘sorpasso’ to the PP in five of the eight Andalusian provinces and was barely 7,000 votes. The situation that the polls now paint is very different, but the question remains as to whether the PP will need Vox as essential ally to stay in power. The PP candidate has played to expand his electoral base by the center left and has asked for the borrowed vote of socialist voters to be able to govern without pacts.
The PSOE, which looks out over an abyss in Andalusia, has not believed that there will be a transfer of votes from its ranks to Moreno. This Sunday it will be measured how strong the extreme right is, if the PP governments without Vox are possible or an entelechy and if the wear and tear of Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE is so high that Moreno touches the absolute majority in what has been the great feud socialist.
The PSOE has faced its most difficult campaign in Andalusia. Not because of the social rejection, which they say was greater in 2012, when in the midst of the outbreak of the ERE case their candidates suffered insults on the street and rejection of the citizens. The candidate Juan Espadas has not had that perception of catastrophe but the polls predict a severe defeat. It remains to be seen if the PSOE in Andalusia is as strong as they say or can fall below one million votes and worsen the result of susana diaz in 2018, which would be a resounding failure.
the lefts rehearse also the future of the political project of Yolanda Diaz, that finally and after resisting, he answered the calls for help from Por Andalucía, which is also facing on the left with Forward Andalusia of Theresa Rodriguez. The fragmentation of this space makes deputies more expensive, experts say, although only three right-wing parties joined to unseat the PSOE from the Government after almost four decades.
a social change
The Andalusian president already achieved for the first time three and a half years ago the change in the Andalusian Government after 37 uninterrupted years of socialist power. He rose to the presidency of the Board after the most resounding defeat in an Andalusian election, with 26 of the 109 deputies of Parliament and thanks to a coalition with Cs and a pact with Vox. Now the tables have turned. Their Liberal partners in the Government are on the verge of disappearance. A couple of Cs deputies can give Moreno oxygen to isolate Vox.
The great doubt to clear up when the polls open will be to see how far the PP has penetrated Andalusia and if there is a political turnaround of such magnitude that it places the center-right party on the brink of an absolute majority. In 2012 Javier Arenas signed 50 deputies but the victory turned into a bitter defeat because PSOE agreed with IU and remained on the Board. The historical of the PP assure that those elections signed the first triumph of the center right in the community. Now they aspire to something else, they want the PP to become “in the party that most resembles Andalusia & rdquor ;, in “the party of the middle classes”, in the majority in a community of socialist hegemony.
The PP campaign has not lasted fifteen days but began practically as soon as Moreno became president of the Andalusian Government. Meanwhile, the PSOE has been without opposition for three years, tangled up in how and when to unseat Susana Díaz and who should succeed her. The rest of the left a civil war was opened to expel Teresa Rodríguez from the political arena.
From practically its premiere, Moreno’s team made it clear that they were coming to “a quiet change & rdquor; for end “the fear” that for decades the PSOE had encouraged a right-wing government. Moreno has avoided ideological debates whom Vox pushed and despite having signed his first investiture and three budgets with the party of Santiago Abascal. From the first moment in his team they spoke of the Macron style, of a management for all Andalusians without ideologies, they clung to the so-called “constitutional Andalusianism or modern Andalusianism & rdquor ;, they fed the theory of the “economic miracle & rdquor ;, which no economist endorses after a pandemic and in the midst of a serious inflation crisis with a war at the gates of Europe, and they managed the pandemic without serious failures, with a vaccination campaign that worked almost perfectly.
The legislature has had an injection of extraordinary funds via State from the European Union. Each criticism of the opposition about the problems in public health, health staff and the collapse of primary care have had the same response from the PP, true: More cut the PSOE after the 2008 crisis. The inheritance received of the PSOE has been a weighty alibi for the management of the Andalusian Government of PP and Cs.
The PP ‘copies’ the PSOE
If we look at the comparative data of the Electoral Barometer of the Sociological Research Center (CIS), the PP has superseded the PSOE in Andalusia as the party preferred by the citizens. Specifically as the party that best defends the interests of Andalusia, the one that most connects with the interests of citizens, inspires more confidence, has a better leader and is perceived as better qualified to govern. All these qualitative well illustrate what can happen this Sunday.
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The PP with a brand beyond the acronym, that of ‘Juanma’, as president of the Board has taken advantage of his time in government to remove from the PSOE all the flags with which he has easily won almost four decades in the community. The most striking thing is that neither Moreno nor the PP was well valued by Andalusians in 2018. The comparison between the CIS polls in 2018 and 2022 would illustrate almost a political miracle. In all these questions the PP was chosen by less than 10% of Andalusians. In the last poll, the popular ones climb twenty and even thirty percentage points in all these indicators.
Andalusians have also turned a little more than half a point to the right in their ideological self-placement, going from 4.55 in 2018 to 5.15 in 2022. This small social shift towards the center right has led to talk of the rightward shift of the community most socialist in Spain. The truth is that one might wonder if the PSOE lost its more left-wing essence after so many years of governments to become the conservative option, which gave more security to many Andalusians. This is what has possibly changed with a PP that the socialists accuse of “political transvestism & rdquor; for wanting to resemble the PSOE in its most important fiefdom in Spain.