Patricia Crespo |
Madrid (EFE) until the disappearance of Ciudadanos and that point to bipartisanship with the concentration of the vote in the two big parties and the strengthening of the figure of many mayors, above the initials they represent.
The president of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), José Félix Tezanos; the president of Gad3, Narciso Michavila; and the director of Communication and Strategy of Sigma Dos, Antonio Asencio, ventured to analyze what will happen in the face of the regional and municipal elections on May 28 and the general elections, which will be held at the end of the year.
Tezanos (CIS): the two big ones have more
The first thing that Tezanos warns is that the surveys are valid for the moment they are carried out, so they must be taken with “caution”. That said, it gives them the status of trend indicators.
“In Spanish society there remains a tendency of the temperate left that is powerful, constant, that even in moments of weakness it has been maintained. There is a tendency to the left of this fueled by objective problems, which we do not know if it will be led by one or two groups or three (…) and then there is a center that is going to be diluted, it will have little weight ”, he explains the president of the CIS.
The political panel of his analysis is completed with “a formation of the right that has strength for the next elections and another of the extreme right, where there may be surprises as the campaigns show that it is not a useful vote.”
According to his forecast, the percentage of concentrated votes increases: “It is a quite probable trend that between the two big parties they will add a percentage of the vote that is even higher than 55 or 60% in general.”
In Tezanos’s opinion, it is possible that there will be changes in the electoral political landscape and some things that are considered very certain by some for the May elections probably will not be so.
In this case -autonomous and municipal- there is a fragmentation of the vote that has to do with the provincial leaders, with the confidence that they transmit to the citizens and with their trajectory, above the initials with which they compete. This is known as policy customization.
Narciso Michavila (GAD3): end of cycle
“These elections on May 28 mark the definitive end of the 15M cycle, which produced the irruption of Podemos on the one hand and, later, the appearance of Ciudadanos”, outlines Michavila.
Ciudadanos disappears and Podemos suffers, it is reconfigured, adds Michavila, to then point out that parties like Más Madrid, Más País or Vox can improve a little compared to what they had four years ago.
“At the same time, we will also see a Socialist Party that holds up at the municipal level and a Popular Party that barely surpasses it and, therefore, a return to bipartisanship,” he concludes. The most significant thing will be the return of Ciudadanos voters to the PP.
In addition, in May it will be possible to verify the pull of many mayors, above their own marks, and how there will be “many voters, more and more”, who take a ballot from one political party in a ballot box and from another in the other.
Regarding the possible surprises on election night, he points out that there is great uncertainty, with very open scenarios in the Valencian Community, Aragon, the Balearic Islands and Extremadura. “It could be that there was no change of government or it could be that most governments changed,” he warns.
Along with this, the PP, according to Michavila, has its main strongholds secured: Madrid and Murcia are not going to change and Galicia, Castilla y León and Andalusia are not submitting to the polls.
In the case of the general elections, he argues that, paradoxically, it is much better to know what is going to happen than in May. For Michavila, in December there will be “the end of the Pedro Sánchez cycle, also knowing that never in the history of Spain will there be any political party that tries to reach the government with a motion of no confidence, because if you do not arrive with majorities natural, social and electoral, in the end you have to give in to each of the questions that they ask of you (…) and that is in the end what has led the PSOE to the results it has had in all the regional elections”.
Asencio (Sigma Two): the key is in the undecided
“A little more than two months from the regional and municipal polls, what we observe in the Sigma Dos polls is that the voter of the center-right spectrum is very mobilized and, nevertheless, among the PSOE voters there are more than one 20% undecided”, summarized Antonio Asencio.
The key, therefore, he explains, will be for the center-right to maintain this mobilization, marked by the national climate, although it will surely move to the regional and municipal ones; and that the left and, above all, the PSOE manage to mobilize the undecided.
What happens in the general elections will also be very marked by what happens in the May elections, in which the surveys carried out by Sigma Dos indicate that the PSOE resists better in some territories than at the national level. “In other words, while it is true that the general climate influences the voting dynamics in the face of the regional and municipal elections, it is also true that each one of them is an election in itself and must be analyzed carefully and taking into account the electoral and political reality of each autonomous community and each municipality”.
As a closure, he considers what is happening to be a paradox, since a large critical mass of centrist voters coexists with the drop in the intention to vote of the only party that claimed to be the center, which will be accompanied by a shift in the general vote from left to right on the political board.