In the electoral campaign on the 23rd, different approaches to the economy have surfaced and even, in the field of those who agree that the situation is positive, also different ways of presenting to the voters their own balance of management.
The PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is being the most incoherent at the moment. He came to the presidency of his party thinking that the economy, that is, its poor state and the imminent and certain recession that was announced, would be the Stalingrad of Pedro Sánchez, the main lever for the assault on Moncloa. Halfway, as the prospects improved, he changed horses. The disaster was not coming and he seemed to choose to forget about it. But it was going to be very strange to endure the long pre-campaign and the final campaign without talking about the economy, so important to everyone. In addition, there was the danger that the message would end up reduced only to lower taxes. That is probably why Feijóo has been rehearsing timid forays into this field that, in general, have ended badly for his objectives.
In the end, he has been forgetting his idea of ??reforming pensions, which went from being the promise of the Normandy landings to the threat of defeat of the Invincible Armada. The depth of the bet, millions of pensioner votes at stake, has injected equine doses of caution into the thinking minds of the PP.
It has not been the only forgetfulness. She has also reversed the proposal to repeal the labor counter-reform of the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz. One of the star measures of the current socialist government. The current robust state of the labor market and the desire to avoid new troubles by the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi -also from the large companies of the overvalued IBEX- plus the pact with Brussels, which also includes pensions, have led the popular to publicly assure that they will not question it.
But it is not dramatic for the popular either. Among the bulk of his present and potential social support, the vote does not depend on the reaction to any special economic measure but rather on the political rejection generated by Sánchez and his associates. That’s the key key for him and he only ventures into the economy when he thinks it’s safe territory. His public is the closest to the wealthy society. Another thing is that his lapse ends up breaking down the picture. It is already known that Feijóo is not particularly gifted for debates, much less for economic ones.
But talking about the economy has not generated complete harmony among the members of the coalition government either. Sánchez and Díaz, without reaching notable contradictions, except in specific cases, such as the moratorium on house evictions, have intoned differentiated tunes that confirm that they are aimed at nuancedly different social sectors.
In the first place, the President of the Government. Sánchez has chosen to openly chest what has been done, make a clearly optimistic balance of his management during the legislature that is now ending. He has tried to avoid controversial issues during the campaign, avoiding new proposals that could generate rejection among the closest or most doubtful voters or that discourage those who were considering the possibility of voting for him. It is about taking advantage of the current economic stability without talking much about taxes, a black beast of the middle classes, both those who pay and those who fear having to do so in the future. For that, it is best to refrain from promises of additional spending, much less lavished in this campaign than in the previous ones carried out by the socialist leader.
The voter to whom it is addressed does not have plenty, but it is not very financially burdened either, and they appreciate that the current situation should be maintained for as long as possible without major shocks. The measures to contain the energy bill, together with the palliatives for price increases in consumer products, in addition to the strength of the job market, keep him in a relatively calm state of mind. For the socialists, the key is what percentage of these middle classes fits that profile and who feels that they pay more taxes than they consider reasonable and embrace the popular idea of ??discounts left and right.
Díaz, the leader of Sumar, on the other hand, has chosen to show off less balance and talk more about what she believes remains to be done. She has not hesitated to put on the table new measures related to the world of work, such as the reduction of working hours and higher and longer taxes. Her reasoning is based on considering that despite the positive measures approved by the government of which she has been a part, the crisis has left scars and has taken its toll on large sectors of the population.
It presupposes that for these voters, Sánchez’s message of satisfaction can feed a feeling of rejection derived from the lack of identification with their own situation, with the reality of their lives. The burden of housing prices, the anguish at the end of the month and declining consumption. And let this congeal in the form of votes towards the hardest sectors of the right, such as Santiago Abascal’s Vox, who claim to break or turn the current state of affairs upside down. The social sector that Diaz is addressing seems to be the one that is experiencing the most difficulties and expects more social measures from the new government that will come out of the elections on July 23. The measures of which Sánchez is so proud do not seem enough, or have hardly been noticed.
In the definition that each of the applicants makes of their social sector of reference in this campaign, the expectations of parliamentary vote to which they aspire are delimited.
