García-Page, the (foreseeable) triumph of constitutional populism

In the IMOP-Insights survey for El Confidencial on the regional elections in Castilla-La Mancha, a key piece of information stands out to the interpreter. One that not only helps to understand the probable victory by an absolute majority of the PSOE led by Emiliano García-Page: it also leads to an in-depth political reflection, not just a demoscopic one, on what has happened in Spain and in the Socialist Party itself in the last few years. last four years and what could—perhaps should—have happened if things had turned out differently during this stinking legislature.

We are facing the only case in four years in which Ciudadanos voters in 2019 are now more inclined to vote for the PSOE than for the PP. Specifically, the 122,955 voters of the orange candidacy in the previous regional elections (11.4% of the vote and four deputies in the regional Parliament) thus distribute their current voting intention: 29.1% declare that they will vote for the PSOE, on 24 .6%, to the Popular Party, 9.6%, to Ciudadanos, and 8.6%, to Vox. The others do not opt for any party or are inclined to abstain.

The most relevant demoscopic fact of recent years is that a party that in April 2019 managed to gather more than four million votes in a general election blew up in a few months due to its own mistakes and left an enormous mass of voters in the constitutional space, ready to be welcomed by the two central forces of the system. Under normal conditions, that legion of moderate votes would have been distributed in similar proportions between the liberal-conservatism of the PP and the social democracy of the PSOE.

But it was not like that. Sánchez did what he did and, as a consequence, for four years we have seen, survey after survey, vote after vote and territory by territory, how the former voters gathered and later centrifuged by Rivera emigrated en masse to the PP, with a significant residue of those who jumped directly to Vox.

If today the PP harbors the well-founded hope of being the party with the most votes in many territories on 28-M and in Spain in the general elections, it is, fundamentally, due to the injection of nearly 800,000 voters from Ciudadanos, which contrasts with the null capacity of Sánchez's party to attract even a minimal part of them. The strategic alliance of the PSOE with the extreme left and separatist nationalism turned out to be a sharp dissuasor for the sympathizers of a party linked from the cradle to the defense of constitutional values..

Emiliano García-Page has turned out to be the only socialist leader (perhaps with Salvador Illa in Catalonia) capable of attracting the support of an important part of these orphaned moderates, and this will be his salvation on 28-M.

In the Electoral Observatory of El Confidencial and in the other reliable surveys, when in Castilla-La Mancha they ask about the general elections, those same ex-voters of Ciudadanos endorse the others and announce a massive transfer to the PP. The feat of attracting them in sufficient number corresponds entirely to García-Page. He will demonstrate on 28-M that Rivera effectively vaccinated his followers against sanchismo, but not necessarily against the PSOE.

An additional fact: on the famous ideological scale, those who are located at intermediate point 5 (where the so-called centrism and mere de-ideologization are mixed) massively support García-Page for the regional elections and Feijóo for the general ones. We are talking about 25% of the census, a decision-making bloc, the true Ohio of Spanish electoral sociology.

What García Page has done to deserve this massive support is just as important as what he has not done. Mainly, he has not made outlandish pacts or lying speeches. She got rid of the Podemos company as soon as she could thanks to the help of Cospedal: she forcefully imposed a reform of the composition of the regional Parliament, leaving it at only 33 deputies, believing that this would guarantee her victory, and what she achieved was to expel Podemos from the autonomous Parliament and provide García-Page with a solo government.

For the rest, García-Page has done nothing more than interpret an updated version of the leadership model that allowed José Bono to govern hegemonically for 21 years in a territory with a clear conservative majority.. I like to call it constitutional populism and in the history of our democracy there are a handful of illustrious examples of the same phenomenon: Bono in Castilla-La Mancha and Jordi Pujol in Catalonia, with two very different styles, perhaps they were its most prominent exponents.. We can add Rodríguez Ibarra in Extremadura, Francisco Vázquez in A Coruña and Fraga in Galicia, Rita Barberá in Valencia, all the socialist presidents of Andalusia, except Griñán, or, as a more remote precedent, Enrique Tierno in Madrid.. Currently, in addition to García-Page, there are notorious cases such as Francisco de la Torre in Malaga, Miguel Anxo in Pontevedra or Miguel Ángel Revilla in Cantabria.. And what to say about Isabel Díaz Ayuso in Madrid.

Constitutional populism is a winning model where it is executed well, but you have to serve for it. It is distinguished from destituent populisms because it does not defend centrifugal political values, but rather centripetal ones; it does not operate in the extreme margins of the system, but in its central space; it has a strong majority vocation; it does not tend to divide the social body, but to unite it, and practices a kind of emotional patriotism of the small land compatible with a general framework of coexistence. They are leaders who know how to merge their figures with the interests of the territory they govern; they are protesters but not agitators, and they develop a singular capacity to establish emotional ties with the population. Nothing to do with the robotic headquarters that are produced in bulk in certain laboratories.

García-Page has had it more difficult than Bono because he has had to swim against the mainstream, both in his party and in the country. He is one of the very few socialist leaders who, on occasion, have dared to raise their voices —carefully measuring the decibels, but audibly for those who were paying attention— in the face of the most obscene excesses of the Monclovite command. He maintains a delicate balance between saying what he means and thinking what he says. Know your clientele like nobody else. And despite his (relative) youth, he has thousands of flight hours in politics and more shells than a tortoise..

Still, I wouldn't be completely calm in his place.. Three weeks is a long time, in your region there are several provinces dangerously exposed to the Madrid contagion and environmental anti-Sanchism is intensifying. If the PP had found a competitive candidate for this race in Castilla-La Mancha, we would be facing a very different scenario; but it is not the case, as the survey and the mere observation of reality show.

If his victory is confirmed on May 28, the sanchistas—who watch him as much as hate him—will display that victory as their own.. He will let them do, and will continue to wait.