The campaign completed a week yesterday and the parties face the final stretch with the urgency of mobilizing their electorate. To yours and to the undecided. Trying to get citizens to get up from the sofa and go to the polls on 28-M to counteract a growing disaffection.
The bad behavior of politicians, according to the latest CIS barometer presented this week, is already the fifth problem for Spaniards, behind healthcare and ahead of the quality of employment and the housing situation. But this is not all, 35% have no sympathy for any political party, while 11% of those surveyed the week before the start of the municipal campaign assured that they still did not have a guaranteed vote. The risk that many voters will stay at home in a campaign that goes beyond the local to place the battle on the level of general politics worries the formations.
Hence, from now on and until Sunday, May 28, the parties will dedicate themselves to convincing and mobilizing before elections that in many provincial capitals and communities the result will be a handful of votes.
Fighting not only abstention, but also the lethargy of voters who still do not know which option to opt for will therefore be one of the keys to the next elections.
After a week of political anger, the campaign returned to calmer channels yesterday. The matches breathed air with the intention of reorienting themselves for the final stretch. Pedro Sánchez, who suspended the meeting in Badajoz due to the fire in Las Hurdes, will try to return to the propositional debate and the work of the Government with which he had planned to channel the electoral contest if the controversy with the lists of EH Bildu had not broken out.
The Socialists calculate that they have options to capture between 10% and 15% of the progressive voters who have not yet decided on their political option and the bitter statements of the PP, stirring up the ghost of ETA, far from harming them, can help mobilize the left-wing voter in the final stretch of the campaign. They consider that the radicalized discourse of the PP can give air to Vox at a time when the reforms of the only yes is yes or the repeal of the crime of sedition, which could have taken their toll on the PSOE at the polls, are already amortized.
Today, Sánchez will visit Valencia, where the socialist Ximo Puig is playing to reissue the presidency of the Valencian Community. On Sunday it will be the PP who celebrates its central campaign act there. The battle for Valencia is close and the presence of the two leaders could end up tipping the balance of the winner.
While Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who on Thursday from Barcelona clamored to "change the conversation" and return to "good politics", yesterday he recovered his economic speech against the President of the Government.
He did not leave behind the controversy over EH Bildu, but from Galicia he did so in a calmer tone than the one he had used days ago, while Isabel Díaz Ayuso is reluctant to abandon the debate on the terrorist band.
The president of Madrid, who wants an absolute majority and needs to reduce the aspirations of Vox in the Community, denied any clash with the leadership of the PP due to their differences over the request to outlaw EH Bildu. All this, despite the fact that the Central Electoral Board yesterday rejected the request of the far-right party to exclude from the lists the 44 convicted of terrorism due to lack of jurisdiction.
Díaz Ayuso, who has established himself as a battering ram against Sánchez's policies, came to charge against Consuelo Ordóñez, president of the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite) by slipping that the request for the PP not to continue using ETA in the campaign was motivated because "he has had personal problems with the PP for years." A note: the president of Covite is the sister of Gregorio Ordóñez, deputy and popular councilor assassinated by the terrorist group in 1995.
The campaign will accelerate this weekend with central acts and will face the final stretch starting on Monday. At stake is a not inconsiderable bag of voters who make up their minds at the last minute. 22% of voters –according to the CIS– confess that they decide to vote in the last week or on the eve of the elections. Winning or losing can be in the hands of these undecided.
