Unides Podem partially sealed the gap opened by the presentation of Yolanda DÃaz’s Sumar project and, barely three days after the Esquerra Unida leadership supported the vice president and the Podem leaders withdrew from the event (despite the good relationship with the who was head of his candidate for the Generalitat), both parties closed their agreement to run jointly in the regional elections. After months of discreet and complicated negotiation, logic prevailed and the two leaderships chose to give up their initial claims to avoid what would have been political suicide.
And not only that, Podem and the EU advanced the intention of transferring the agreement to more than fifty municipalities. On 28M the municipal vote is key since both elections coincide again. In 2019, the space of this coalition lost, in the local ones, almost 67,000 votes with respect to the regional ones that were held a month before. In fact, the brand was left out of the Valencia City Council. Now, they explain from the formation, they will have a campaign rooted in the territory with the local collectives all working together.
However, the agreement does not ensure that the two formations that will present themselves as a coalition will overcome the 5% barrier (the approximately 130,000 votes that are needed to have representation in the Corts Valencianes). It is true that most of the published surveys place UP within the Chamber, which gives the Botà nic an extra bullet to continue for four more years. Yesterday, they were the ones who disseminated the poll commissioned at 40dB -1,500 interviews with a margin of error of 2.5%-, which with 9.1% in direct intention to vote plus sympathy would place them closer to matching the results of 2019 than to suffer for the electoral ribbon.
In fact, this survey places them as the key to reissue the Botà nic since there is a tie between PSPV (21.2%) and PP (19%) and CompromÃs (11.5%) and Vox (12.7%) that would undo UP. According to their data, 35.1% prefer a third progressive pact than a PP and Vox coalition (24.1%). The preferences for solo governments with which both the PP and the PSPV have speculated these days, they point out, are much lower.
It is curious that the studies that most doubt the solidity of the brand are the internal ones of its partners; in its day, those of the PSPV and, more recently, that of CompromÃs. Fire friend. “They seek the useful vote, but, deep down, they are interested in us entering Parliament, if we were so fair they would not do it,” Podem sources explain.
It escapes no one that they are competitors in the same space. In fact, in the Valencian Community there is a very evident dual vote, as can be seen in April 2019 when the regional and general votes coincided. In the first, the nationalist coalition achieved 228,248 more votes than the purple and red coalition; in the general elections, on the other hand, the balance was 208,977 votes for Unides Podem.
A transfer of votes that makes the strategists of the coalition headed by Héctor Illueca seek to attract that dual voter who can cast two different ballots on the same day depending on the urn where they vote. A situation that explains, in part, UP’s strategy to distance itself from CompromÃs and its candidate’s constant criticism of his rival Joan BaldovÃ.
“In 2019 it was difficult to show that we were not homogenous acronyms, since the dregs of the generals were dragging where we went together (2015 and 2016) and Pablo Iglesias campaigned for Mónica Oltra”, they explain from Podem. For this reason, now they try to emphasize that “they are not the same” so that the voter who trusts them in the state elections does not go, again, to CompromÃs.
Strategy is not just about differentiating yourself, but about pushing your rivals to the center of the political chessboard. For this reason, Illueca criticizes CompromÃs, assuring that it is in the hands of more conservative leaders.
According to the 2019 CIS post-electoral data, Podem was located at 2.1 on the ideological scale (being 1 left and 10 right), while CompromÃs was at 3. In that space of 1 and 2 was 8, 6% of the voter -in those elections UP obtained 8%- so the objective is to mobilize this entire spectrum of the political board and try to scratch something from the 14.1% that is located at 3 on the ideological scale, territory of commitments
There is still time because, according to the data from his poll, there is a 39.5% undecided who, surely, will settle the final balance next Sunday, May 28.
