Vox advances "surprises" for the campaign and rules out that the 'Olona effect' steals voters

The plan succeeded in 2019, but it will not be repeated in 2023. Vox has proposed a change in strategy in its preparation of lists for 23-J and will avoid, among other points, signing independent candidates with a “media” profile, as happened with the State lawyer Macarena Olona, who broke up almost a year with the party of Santiago Abascal and triggered the worst organic crisis experienced by the formation to date.

With just over 40 days to go until the general elections, Vox works like a perfectly oiled machine in the design of its electoral roadmap. The advance executed by Pedro Sánchez, like the rest of the parties, surprised Vox, but sources from the party leadership assure that the inertia that they still maintain from 28-M gives strength to the formation for the main electoral event of the course, and in the one that Vox aspires to consolidate as an unavoidable piece for the PP, as happened two weeks ago at the local and regional level.

Thus, after having structured lists to appear in nearly 2,000 municipalities and including some 36,000 candidates in them, Vox now sees it as much easier to complete the 52 provincial lists that will run on 23-J. Some lists based largely on the parliamentary network that Vox already has and that will seek to accommodate in its first positions the majority of the 52 national deputies that have made up the parliamentary group this legislature.

The candidacies will be completed by well-known faces of the party in the territorial panorama, new incorporations and independent profiles, but without outstanding public relevance, as is the case of Olona, signed in March 2019, who ended up becoming the spearhead of Vox in Congress and that it was even head of the list in the Andalusian elections of June 2022.

His disagreements with the leadership of the formation in that campaign, precisely, were the trigger for his break with the party. Now, the former leader of Vox is trying to collect the necessary guarantees to present herself with a new brand founded by her, Caminando Juntos, conceived as a “transversal party with a marked social character”.. In Vox they subtract weight from Olona's project and rule out that it can steal votes.

As reported by EL MUNDO, Vox made the decision at the end of 2022 to draw up the regional lists with unknown profiles to date -such as the current vice president of Castilla y León- for the first positions of the candidacies. Notable deputies, yes, were elected to the municipal lists and will be able to combine their new municipal role with the seat, if they keep it, as is the case of Inés Cañizares, parliamentarian for Toledo, among others.

The proposal for the preparation of the lists, they explain in the training, part of the provincial executive committees and needs the approval of the National Executive Committee (CEN) of Vox. The deadline for their presentation to the Central Electoral Board (JEC) ends this Wednesday, and Vox plans to make them public at the beginning of the week.

Regarding the design of the campaign, the Vox management is already working hard on its planning. The format used for 28-M -a decentralized campaign and without grouping the leaders, with up to eight simultaneous caravans and combining events indoors and abroad- convinces the party leadership, which considers that the final stretch was decisive for the time to seal the results obtained. Of course, voices of the device advance some “surprise”.

Abascal, who kept a low profile in recent months and controlled his appearances prior to 28-M, has monopolized prominence since Vox emerged reinforced from the municipal and regional governments and has become the main protagonist of the party with the aim of not being cornered by the figures of Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo.