The numbers are very firm and coherent in the different polls – except for the last CIS, which has been picturesque in this statistical series – for Sumar: its result should move between 3.1 and 3.7 million votes. In other words, between the results of United We Can in April and November 2019. This means that the coalition of fifteen progressive organizations headed by Yolanda Díaz is in a position to at least repeat its current representation in Congress –35 seats–, which It would only be enough to repeat the coalition with the PSOE if Pedro Sánchez’s men are close to their numbers from four years ago.
In November 2019, the sum of Unidas Podemos, Más País and Compromís yielded 3.6 million votes and 38 seats. Today, Sumar walks in forks very close to those numbers, but a year ago, the perspective was very different. Díaz’s integration candidacy moved above 4 million votes, even 4.5 million. Since then, the Cainite wars in space and the informal and very expressive boycott of Podemos to his candidacy have claimed a million votes. To win them back is Sumar’s ambition.
The conflict had been lurking, in whispers of Podemos with the press, since January – when the leadership conspired underhandedly with ERC to knock down the labor reform – but it broke out when former vice president Pablo Iglesias made it public in a loud voice at the Autumn University of Can. Since then, the polling companies began to study the support of Sumar and Podemos as two different political subjects, since that is how the voter identified them after the relief of Podemos. Around a million votes maintained their loyalty to the purple brand, while more than three million already signed up for Yolanda Díaz’s platform.
Attempts to close the schism were unsuccessful, and Podemos’ boycott of the presentation ceremony for Díaz’s candidacy in Magariños on April 2 closed the window of opportunity for an armistice that would allow both electoral universes to be added to aspire to 65-70 real seats that space was all but guaranteed less than a year ago. The result of May, in which Podemos disappeared from the Madrid institutional space and from almost all the others – the ratio of councilor acts between IU and Podemos in communities such as Andalusia, the Valencian Community or Asturias is almost 40 to 1 in favor of those of Alberto Garzón – curtailed the possibility cherished by those of Ione Belarra of presenting themselves alone, every time their expectation of a million votes was reduced to less than half.
Now, with the leadership of Podemos voluntarily relegated to the campaign, Sumar’s objective is to recover the greatest number of votes possible from that million that has vanished. In part, that is the role of the two members of the Podemos executive who act as spokespersons for Sumar, Nacho Álvarez and Alejandra Jacinto. Adding part of this objective to the performance of Yolanda Díaz in the televised debates –although the absence of the PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, limits the scope of these programs– and to a campaign that avoids polarization and that wants to express itself positively, as The program coordinator, María Eugenia Rodríguez Palop, insisted this Thursday: “We are tomorrow”.
