On 28-M tests Sánchez's endurance against a Feijóo who needs to impose the "change of cycle"

Neither Pedro Sánchez nor Alberto Núñez Feijóo are running for the May 28 elections, but both have raised the campaign as a first round of the generals. Both the PP and PSOE candidates have tried, unsuccessfully so far, for the messages to be in a home code. Experience dictates that acronyms do not drag and that depending on which debates they can penalize. The elections in Castilla y León and Andalusia are close enough in time to have learned from mistakes. Juanma Moreno won a historic majority by selling his management; On the contrary, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco was weighed down by the landing of the national leadership. The PSOE bet everything to shake the ghost of the PP-Vox clamp. it didn't work.

Despite the background, Sánchez has done it again. The campaign has been thrown on his back. At each rally, there has been an announcement with its consequent reflection in the Official State Gazette, Council of Ministers through. The Monclovites detected the problems that worried the voters the most and began to promise. It happened with housing and yesterday with the drought. The president has overshadowed the program of the municipal and regional authorities. Any announcement of its candidates is a dead letter before the “cannon”, in the words of Patxi López, who shoots the Moncloa.

In the PSOE, there are many doubts about this strategy, which they attribute to the “nervousness” of the president. “He has bought the plebiscite from Feijóo”, they point out from the party, where they consider that the national dimension benefits the PP more than them. The heads of Feijóo's list are mostly, except for Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Fernando López Miras, candidates, compared to consolidated barons such as Emiliano García-Page or Guillermo Fernández Vara.

Why has Sánchez put himself in the front line? The answer lies in the lack of mobilization that has been detected on the left. In the bowels of Monclovita, the tracking shows that in the block on the right there is an agitation typical of a general election, where it is always greater. Opposite, the left is in figures of some regional. If in the last legislative votes the mobilization of the blocks was even at 43%, now the right would maintain this tension. But on the opposite side it would be around 35%, according to the polls that reach the parties.

Tradition marks that the result of the municipal elections is the prelude to what will happen in the general elections. Except in 2007, when the PP obtained seven tenths more than the PSOE, but months later Zapatero revalidated his mandate. But the president assumes it that way. Except for José Félix Tezanos's CIS, which yesterday published a macro survey, the polls of private companies predict a clear victory for the PP. That the CIS wins the PSOE is not a novelty, it is rather part of a mobilization strategy, according to public opinion experts. Tezanos does not skimp and places the socialists 4.4 points above the popular ones in the municipal elections. It also predicts that they will keep all their fiefdoms. The objective is to convey to the socialist voter that there is a party. That they go to vote because all is not lost.

In the Moncloa they work with the other polls. Those that say that Sanchez can fit a painful defeat against Feijóo in the municipalities. It remains to be seen how big. In 2019, the socialists achieved an incontestable victory over the popular of Pablo Casado. Seven points of difference. Unless there is a major surprise, Feijóo’s will not apply a similar punishment to the president, the difference could be between two and three points, which has been the tonic of the other appointments. Except for the 10 points with which the PP beat the PSOE in 2011 with an outgoing José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. This is precisely the mirror in which Sanchez does not want to look at himself and that is why he will put all the heavy artillery at the service of these elections..

Feijóo insists that they are municipal and regional, not general. The objective is to try to remove a pressure that is there. Andalusia has set the bar very high for the leader of Genoa, then recently crowned. The first appointment with the polls as president of the party was a success. Inevitably, on 29-M there will be talk about whether the Galician adds. The PP needs to win the municipal elections with a margin. Overcome a million votes away from Sánchez to put into circulation the already hackneyed change of cycle. If the distance is two points, it will not be possible to uncork champagne, since the rival is a president who, with his record, should be scorched.

Feijóo needs to claim himself as the winner, both against a Sánchez who agrees with Bildu and internally. An absolute majority for Ayuso and a victory by the minimum in the municipal elections would reopen the internal debate in the party. The Galician is going to turn his back. In the regional elections, he needs a trophy, to snatch a fiefdom from the PSOE, and the probabilities place the Valencian Community within reach. If only La Rioja, Cantabria and the Balearic Islands recover, alarm bells will ring.

Except for Ayuso or García-Page, absolute majorities are still a thing of the past. Here Podemos and Vox come into play. Both will be decisive. In the case of the purple ones, despite having less representation than in 2019, they can get more power. The socialists need them and will value each deputy and councilor. If they disappear in the Community of Madrid, it will be a symptom of weakness that Yolanda Díaz will take advantage of to gain strength in the face of the negotiations that will resume after 28-M. The vice-president wants an alliance, but expects Pablo Iglesias’ party to be weakened..

In the case of Vox, it has opted for a low profile. The plan goes through obtaining revenue from the deficiencies of the PP. Those of Santiago Abascal will sell their support where they are decisive. The prominence of the rural world in the face of drought benefits them. There will be no extremist speeches. They have learned from Andalusia.

Ciudadanos, the pivotal party by definition, may be before its last elections. The polls leave him out of town halls and communities. In the Madrid City Council, Begoña Villacís aspires to resist and be decisive. The transfer of votes to the PP is almost 100%, except in Catalonia and Castilla-La Mancha, as evidenced by the survey published today by El Confidencial.

Political scientists have detected that more and more people are undecided until a few days before going to the polls. Campaigns and debates, if they do not mobilize, they do penalize. On 29-M we will see the new board of alliances and if Sanchez’s attrition is real or a chimera.