Is there or is there not a cycle change? The answer, as always, depends on how the question is phrased. In the electoral scenario there are two times that should not be confused: what is happening today and what may end up happening on election day. And the further away the two dates are, the more distance there may be between the forecast and the outcome. Even so, if the answer sticks to what seems to be happening now, the conclusion is clear: not only is there a change in the cycle, but also a real conservative cyclone that would sweep to the left.
Of course, what is happening is very conditioned by the boost that its overwhelming victory in the Andalusian elections of 19-J has represented for the PP. In this sense, the average survey produced by the polls carried out after that electoral appointment would leave the PP with 31% of the votes and the PSOE with less than 25%. That correlation, which would place Vox above 16% of the vote, would give the popular more than 130 seats, which together with the 53 of the extreme right and those of Navarra Suma would mean up to 185 deputies for the conservative bloc.
In this case, the left would gather 125 deputies and less than 38% of the votes, compared to 49% of the vote that the center and the right would reap. From there, and just as it happened months after Ayuso's triumph in Madrid, it is very possible that the momentum generated by the Andalusian result will lose strength. Therefore, an average based on a longer period (from April to July), could partially discount the temporary impact of the overwhelming popular majority of 19-J.
However, the forecasts would continue to be grim for the left. In this case, the PP would remain below 28% of the vote and the PSOE would approach 26%. Now, the strength of Vox (with an average vote of 18%) and the weakness of Podemos (with an average vote below 11%), would draw a scenario of an absolute majority for the center and the right (with 180 seats). and more than 48% of the ballots), while the left would remain below 40% of the vote and would gather 130 deputies.
This is what is happening. And what is happening is also explained by a theoretical transfer of more than half a million votes from the PSOE to the PP (and almost two million from Vox and Cs). That transfer would take the popular over seven and a half million votes. A photo that is completed today with the desertion of a million and a half socialist voters, lost for now between abstention and indecision.
The problem with this scenario (unless the war economy further deteriorates the purchasing power of citizens and prolongs its impact until the 2023 elections) is that you have to go back to 2011 to find a similar correlation between the right (49%) and left (36%). But since then, both blocks have moved in a range of 43% to 46% of the vote.
For this reason, it is not unlikely that what ends up happening is more similar to the July CIS poll, which gives the PP a short victory (around 130 seats), although it is based on a sensitive transfer from Vox and Cs, in a sort of communicating vessels within the conservative bloc. In this way, the decline of the extreme right and the extinction of Cs would leave the total calculation of the conservative vote at 44%, one point more than in 2019, and 166 seats (153 now).
For its part, the left (43% and 152 parliamentarians with More Country, compared to the current 157) would remain 24 deputies from the absolute majority but would still have options to reissue the investiture bloc. It should not be forgotten that the caricatured Frankenstein government turned out to be an accomplished tightrope walker and a born survivor.
