The Aberri Eguna, Basque Country Day, celebrated yesterday was very eloquent of the exact point at which the Basque pre-campaign is, which is not yet heating up, less than three weeks before the elections. The PNB celebrated this day of vindication in Bilbao, with an appeal to the mobilization of its electorate and, especially, “the undecided”, in the face of the “hidden agenda” of EH Bildu. Meanwhile, the Abertzale coalition claimed in an event in Pamplona, ??where he holds the mayor’s office, his “governance vocation”, to build “governments with a purpose” and “that guarantee people’s social rights”.
The pre-campaign is progressing very much conditioned by what the polls indicate and by the perception that the electoral tension is, for the moment, limited. The polls predict a very close fight between the PNB and EH Bildu, with the PSE and the PP maintaining positions and the space for Podemos and Sumar on the decline; however, they also point out that the voters of the Abertzale coalition are much more mobilized.
According to the latest EiTB Focus, vote loyalty among those who opted for Bildu four years ago reaches 88%, while in PNB it remains at 63%. The survey also detects vote transfers to the Abertzale coalition from abstention, from Podemel 2020 and, to a lesser extent, from PNB.
In Sabin Etxea there is concern about the possible demobilization of part of his electorate. They fear a “punishment” abstention like the one they detected in the last dates with the polls and want to focus their messages during the next twenty days on calling for mobilization, stirring up the fear of a hypothetical Bildu government and alluding to the confrontation between two models. This is exactly what they did in yesterday’s Aberri Eguna, in which they deployed all their artillery and reinforced the messages of their candidate, Imanol Pradales, with the interventions of Andoni Ortuzar or the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu. “It is at stake to grow in welfare and as a nation or go backwards like crabs. You have to choose between a better or worse future for Euskadi. You have to choose between two models”, indicated Pradales.
The perspective in the ranks of EH Bildu is different. They are aware that they have the wind in their favor and they are not overly concerned about this lack of mobilization, insofar as their electorate is indeed mobilized. The Abertzale coalition tries to be proactive and aims to present itself as a credible alternative government, with “a country plan” and a growing institutional experience. “We want to remember that ours is a project with a vocation for government and the State”, pointed out Arnaldo Otegi in Pamplona.
