Power only wears down those who don't know how to use it. The opposition, on the other hand, can become a bottomless pit for those who have lost the government after occupying it continuously for 36 years. The pre-election survey of the CIS on the Andalusian elections confirms this diagnosis, although this time more in line with the majority of the published surveys. And it also does so with the authority granted by a sample of 8,000 interviews, almost double that of its Andalusian counterpart.
In fact, the public institute's survey certifies that the result of 2018, when the left lost the majority in Andalusia for the first time, did not reflect a momentary fainting of the PSOE but the first symptom of an infinite fatigue of the progressive space. Of course, that result, which reversed the historical correlation between right and left in Andalusia, announced something else.
The main one, as the CIS survey also confirms, is the replacement of class struggle by horizontal conflicts and cultural wars. This is the only way to explain why, in 2018, a dystopian program tinged with anti-feminism, homophobia and xenophobia brought to the surface 400,000 voters in favor of Vox and that, four years later, that mark continues to grow above 15%.
In other words, territorial, identity or migratory clashes profoundly redraw electoral borders. And in this sense, Andalusia was the first test bed to measure the electoral impact of the Catalan secessionist process, turned into an existential conflict in Spain after the events of October 2017.
It is also true that Vox limited itself to capitalizing on the strident denunciation that the PP and Cs spread at the time of the impact of the Catalan crisis or migratory flows. But, four years later, the harvest of that sowing is appreciated not only in the intention to vote for June 19. Undoubtedly, the conventional right, the PP, has capitalized on that subterranean malaise of an identity nature, with an advance of at least 15 points that is nourished by the 14 that Ciudadanos has lost and one in ten PSOE voters.
However, that covert strategy of “Spain first” has had another, more profound effect: the PP has displaced the PSOE as the “national party of Andalusia”. While 36% point to the formation of Juanma Moreno as the one that "best defends the interests" of the region, only 14% allude to the PSOE. Never seen in four decades of autonomy.
But, in addition, the PP leads the Socialists in another key chapter when it comes to deciding the vote: it is "the party that best represents the ideas of the people" (29% say so compared to 18% pointing to the PSOE) . An unprecedented record that reflects that the average Andalusian today feels more comfortable in the Spanishness of the PP than in the prudent and polyhedral Spanishness of a PSOE condemned to agree with ERC or Bildu. It is not surprising, therefore, that only 56% of Socialist voters are willing to repeat their vote, compared to 75% of those for the PP.
The CIS survey reflects other factors that explain the deactivation of the traditional sociological left-wing vote. On the one hand, the data on leadership – which already weighed in on the outcome of 2018 – are now overwhelmingly favorable to the popular Moreno, who takes 30 points as the preferred presidential candidate for the socialist candidate (and who is chosen by one in four PSOE voters). ).
On the other hand, the fragmentation and the discourse of the alternative left (Por Andalucía or Adelante Andalucía) do not respond to the concerns of their natural voters and hence a drop of more than seven points if their estimate of the vote is contrasted with the result of Podemos and IU in 2015.
In short, the data on direct voting intentions are so resounding (16 points ahead for the PP), that the CIS has been left, this time, without room for a wider range of projections.
