Alberto Núñez Feijóo insists on appealing to the fear that EH Bildu could govern in Euskadi to mobilize his electorate, even at the risk that the PNV, which maintains a tight pulse with this formation, could benefit from that framework. The popular leader, very active in the Basque campaign, visited the Euskalduna palace in Bilbao yesterday to claim that his party is actually the only alternative to the nationalist coalition. “Many parties are presented, but there are only two options: secessionism in its different versions or the responsibility and constitutional autonomy of the PP,” said the president of the party.
The leader of the PP expressed himself in these terms on a morning in which Basque society, at least the part that is interested in politics, had had breakfast with two new polls that give victory to EH Bildu, the ETB Focus polls and that of the Vocento Group media, coinciding in both cases with what the CIS had estimated this Tuesday.
The popular ones believe that the possibility that EH Bildu can win the Basque elections (another thing will be that it can govern) has mobilizing potential, although they are aware that there they are fighting with the PNV, the main protagonist of the equal fight with the nationalist party. For this reason, Feijóo dedicated a good part of his speech yesterday to making the PNV look like a party “in decline, just like the PSOE.” “The PNV is blending in with Bildu. Either Bildu picks up this decline or the PP picks it up,” he indicated.
The popular leader, in this sense, questioned the economic policy of the PNV – “in Congress they vote with the PSOE and Bildu” – and drew a Basque Country that “has lost leadership positions”, an argument that Javier de Andrés delved into. with a more concrete discourse and close to Basque reality. From there, Feijóo appealed to his potential voters, the 133,000 Basques who gave him their support in the last general elections, more than double the number who voted for the Popular Party in the 2020 Basque Parliament elections, in coalition with Ciudadanos.
The popular Basques are aware that it is very difficult to reach the volume of votes they achieved in July of last year, when they were fourth in Euskadi and managed to send two deputies to Congress. The dual vote has an important weight in the Basque Country and in recent years its results in elections to the Basque Parliament have been bad, reaching rock bottom four years ago, with barely 60,500 votes and 6 seats in coalition with Ciudadanos.
However, the PP does not need a turnaround to achieve its two major objectives on the 21st. The first is to grow, even if minimally, and move away from its electoral soil, standing in the 7 or 8 seats. Furthermore, the popular parties long above all for a scenario that could revalue their parliamentarians: it is the possibility that the PNV and the PSE do not gain an absolute majority (38 seats), something that would force these parties to look to the popular parties to guarantee governance.
In order to achieve this double objective, the PNV is the rival to beat. And it is for a double reason. Firstly, because a bad result for the PNV obviously distances the possibility of an absolute majority between Jeltzales and Socialists, a sum that leaves the PP out of the game. The ETB Focus survey places the PNV with 26-27 seats (compared to EH Bildu's 28-29), and the PSE with 10-12, at the limit of the absolute majority.
Secondly, the PP competes with the PNV for a fraction of its voters. According to the latest CIS, 11% of those who voted for the PP in 2020 are now considering betting on the PNV. For the popular parties, it is essential to retain these voters and motivate voters who only vote for them in the general elections. Hence, Feijóo's continuous references to the PNV in his event yesterday in Bilbao. The distance between growing or staying on its soil and, above all, between being decisive or irrelevant in Euskadi will depend on very few votes.
Beyond his appeals to the PNV, Feijóo dedicated a section of his criticism to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. The socialist leader criticized on Saturday that PP and Vox are “in the mud.” “Not a thousand shovelfuls of mud from Feijóo and Abascal are going to cover up Spain's successes,” he declared in San Sebastián. Yesterday, in Bilbao, Feijóo responded forcefully: “You are the mud, Mr. Sánchez.” “The last idea has been to talk about nothing and mud. We understood the nothingness and the Nodo, because Sánchez makes many advertorials and broadcasts them on his television channels,” exclaimed the popular leader.
