Alberto Núñez Feijóo insists on appealing to the fear that EH Bildu may govern in Euskadi to mobilize its electorate, even at the risk that the PNB, which maintains a tight pulse with this formation, may benefit from this 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 Abertzale 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”, pointed out the president of the formation.
The leader of the PP expressed himself in these terms in a morning in which the Basque society, at least the part that is interested in politics, had breakfast with two new polls that give victory to EH Bildu, the polls of ETB Focus and that of the media of the Vocento Group, coinciding, in both cases, with what the CIS had estimated on Tuesday.
The populists 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 in this they are competing with the PNB, the main protagonist of the equal pole with the formation abertzale For this reason, Feijóo dedicated a large part of his speech yesterday to making the PNB look like a party “in decline, just like the PSOE”. “The PNB is mimicking Bildu. Either Bildu collects this decline or the PP picks it up”, he indicated.
The popular leader, in this sense, questioned the economic policy of the PNB – “in Congress they vote with the PSOE and Bildu” – and drew a picture of a Basque Country that “has lost leadership positions”, an argument that Javier delved into de Andrés with a more concrete speech and attached to the Basque reality. From there, Feijóo appealed to his potential voters, the 133,000 Basques who supported him in the last general election, more than twice as many as popular voters in the 2020 Basque Parliament elections, in coalition with Citizens.
The popular Basques are aware that it is very difficult to reach the volume of votes they achieved in July last year, when they were fourth in the Basque Country 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 poor, reaching rock bottom four years ago, with just 60,500 votes and 6 seats in coalition with Citizens.
However, the PP does not need a setback to achieve its two major goals on the 21st. The first is to grow, even if only minimally, and move away from its electoral base, planting itself in the 7 or 8 seats . In addition, the populists especially long for a scenario that could revalue their parliamentarians: it is the possibility that the PNB and the PSE do not add up to an absolute majority (38 seats), which would force these parties to look to the populists to guarantee governability.
In order to fulfill this double objective, PNB is the rival to beat. And it is for a double reason. First of all, because a bad PNB result obviously removes the possibility of an absolute majority between Jeltzales and socialists, a sum that leaves the PP out of the game. The ETB Focus poll places the PNB with 26-27 seats (against EH Bildu’s 28-29), and the PSE with 10-12, on the edge of an absolute majority.
Second, the PP competes with the PNB for a fraction of its voters. According to the latest CIS, 11% of those who voted for the PP in 2020 are now studying to bet on the PNB. For the populists it is essential to retain these voters and motivate voters who only vote for them in the general elections. This is where Feijóo’s constant references to PNB come from at his event yesterday in Bilbao. The distance between growing or remaining on its soil and, above all, between being decisive or irrelevant in Euskadi will depend on very few votes.
Beyond his appeals to the PNB, Feijóo dedicated a section of his criticism to the president of the central government, Pedro Sánchez. The socialist leader criticized on Saturday that the PP and Vox are “in the mud”. “Not even a thousand blows of the mud shovel from Feijóo and Abascal will cover the achievements of Spain”, he declared in Sant Sebastià. Yesterday, in Bilbao, Feijóo answered him forcefully: “The mud is you, Mr. Sánchez.” “The latest occurrence has been talking about nothing and mud. We understood the nothing and the Nodo, because what advertorials does Sánchez make and broadcasts on his television channels”, exclaimed the popular leader.
