It's like sleeping with an atlas under your arm. That is the relationship between strategists and electoral maps. Behind their geographies, demographics and figures hide the coordinates, responses and initiatives to translate their numbers into specific content. And that is an art. Maps fascinate us, and in this War Room we have always liked to project them with headlines, arguments and examples. Headlines: the PSOE stops its bleeding but does not achieve a turnaround, placing itself in the latter is a mirage. For its part, the PP is in an indisputable technical break after mismanagement of expectations and, of course, the huge mistake before the judicial pact. Without an entry or exit narrative around the agreement, Alberto Núñez Feijóo is touched today. And he is noticed. The table is: PP, 118 seats, around seven million voters; PSOE, 103, above six million; Vox, 48, with three million but going down, and United We Can with 32, at almost three million and going up. Just a few weeks ago the PP was at 135 deputies with seven and a half million votes and the PSOE at 97, bordering on six. There is a long way to go, there is no electoral tension, but no one is close to achieving their goals. In fact, the PSOE can only be first if it overcomes the average difference of more than 20 points that the PP takes from it in 17 constituencies. National totals confuse, scale maps put everything in its place.
Let's go to the arguments and examples. There are three factors that explain these developments: 1) the successful changes of the PSOE in July together with a Pedro Sánchez who recovers, anchored on the left, his determination and audacity; 2) the “Nadia Calviño effect” since that standing ovation in Congress on October 5 that has allowed the central voter to recover: the 550,168 voters who went to the PP today are 412,960 and falling. The vice president has had a brilliant month against the right; and 3) Feijóo, who is in alternate mode instead of alternate, and that is lethal. After landing in Madrid, we shared that not having lost an election was a weakness and that the debate on pacts was enough to see if the statesman was serious and drank his coffee or dissolved like sugar. Promising alternation or alternative sounds like a rhetorical game, but it is not. Alternation is the mechanical replacement in power of one political force by another similar one. The alternative is the conquest of power by a force willing to implement a radically new government program. Feijóo raised huge hopes left and right upon his arrival. The electoral map reflected it. His lack of goal and the management of the judicial pact have disappointed some for sitting down and others for getting up from the table. Sánchez agreed to article 155, Feijóo did not agree to 122. After this slip, the maps indicate that he has one foot inside the Moncloa, but only one.
What else do the maps tell us? That a silent earthquake is looming over Spain. The figures do not point to a change in trend but to the formation of a new one in times of stagflation. There are desires for "clear mandate" in the generation born in 1960. When that happens, the left or right axis must be combined with that of "strong government or weak government." In the Spain of 2023 we will not have mid-term elections like tomorrow in the US, but we will have end-of-term elections: the regional and municipal ones. The projections suggest that after these, the general elections will be won with more than 140 seats and 35% of the votes. Within reach of PP and PSOE.
There are three types of surveys: informative, performative and deformative. The first two modalities usually generate internal effects in the teams, as well as external ones, although less than many journalists imagine; the latter, on the other hand, are extraordinarily dangerous because they produce discontent, anger and even rage in the street against those who promote them. Mirage and technical break, then. Like that birthmark on Mikhail Gorbachev's face that looked like a map. Ken Jennings says that he saw Thailand. Ordinary citizens saw only Gorby.
