The PSOE pivoted from pessimism to a spirit of comeback after the first interviews with Pedro Sánchez in media considered not related and the push of an unapologetic José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to puncture the “sanchismo bubble”. The failed face-to-face debate, in which Ferraz placed all his hopes to reverse the polls, once again sank the mood of the party. The strategic change in the middle of the campaign and the control of the conversation, the attack against Alberto Núñez Feijóo, made the formation recover some pulse to plant itself in the final sprint with the belief that “there is a game”. “everything is open. Now the blocks are almost even and if the progressive trend continues until Sunday we will turn it around,” say sources from Ferraz.
The brake on the transfers from the PSOE to the PP that Ferraz's internal tracking detected last weekend, beginning a trend towards recovery since then, has helped to recover spirits. Added to this, they have detected several seats at stake with the right, for only a handful of votes, in eight medium-sized and small constituencies. To be conquered, pay the “surprise” this 23-J. To a tie in the small provinces that these same sources place at two by two for each of the big parties, instead of three for the PP and one for the PSOE that the polls indicated at the start of the campaign.
To do this, they have improvised the organization of rallies in Huesca and San Sebastián, in addition to promoting an expensive programmatic campaign on social networks aimed at voters in these territories.. In addition to Huesca, Guipúzcoa and Lugo, where Sánchez has held a rally these days, the latest surveys published prior to the legal blackout, such as the one in this newspaper, suggest that the left is playing key seats with the right in Burgos, León, Soria, Pontevedra, A Coruña and La Rioja.
The fight for the undecided in the center, who are considering voting for the PP, but are “ashamed” of their pacts with Vox, and the fight against the demobilization of their own have conditioned the final stretch of the PSOE campaign. At this time, in Ferraz they hold a participation figure of around 75%, which would benefit them and demonstrate the mobilization of the progressive electorate. Even Sumar would be “permeating” in abstentionist sectors of the left. In the PSOE he has launched a mobilizing message with a mass bath at the campaign closing rally. In the city of Getafe, one of its strongholds that was historically called the red belt of Madrid.
The socialists speed up the mobilization between the epic of winning “against all odds”, the thermometer of the rallies and the guide of the numbers that they handle in Ferraz. Taking advantage of the prohibition of the electoral law to publish polls in the last week of the campaign, the parties transfer their own, always interested, to condition public opinion.
The dilemma drawn by the Socialists is that of a PP that reaches the end of the campaign “absolutely devastated”, with Feijóo “losing by default”, starting with his absence from the four-way debate on RTVE, and “we are going back”, they say in the party. A comeback, they argue, that “is not philosophy or desperate”, but would be based on “data”. In Ferraz they believe that the PP has been losing control of the campaign during the last week, with the focus on Feijóo's “lies”, his relationship with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado and the final firecracker of the PP agreements with EH Bildu in the Vitoria city council to distribute the commissions and what the popular have finally renounced after the PNV complaint. “Feijóo reaches the end of the campaign, his credibility does not,” they sentence from the socialist campaign committee.
To consummate the comeback to which they appeal, in Ferraz they are aware that they need Yolanda Díaz's party. That Sumar ensures third place against those of Santiago Abascal. In the debate this Wednesday, to which Feijóo did not attend, a casting of roles by the Sánchez-Díaz tandem was staged to allow Sumar to grow for the left-wing abstentionists, while the Socialists launched themselves for the undecided center.
The PSOE's strategy has been adapting to expectations and the tandem with Díaz gives some credibility to the feeling that they transmit in Ferraz's engine room about the options of the progressive bloc. They do not only seek to save the furniture at the cost of growing for the space to their left through the useful vote. Both PSOE and PP have gone from looking askance at the battle for third place, between Sumar and Vox, to interfering in it. A battle that will have weight in the balance of the blocks that come out of the polls to configure majorities.
The popular ones have increased the attacks against Díaz in the final stretch of the campaign. As if it were an attempt to unmask the friendly profile of Sánchez's electoral ticket, the PP leader opened fire this Thursday with a play on words about the “make-up” of the vice presidency and the “made-up employment data”. The Faes Foundation, chaired by José María Aznar, went a step further this Friday, to describe Díaz in an editorial as “a neo-communist costume made in haste with Dior scraps and mediocre self-help literature.”. Likewise, the popular Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo reproached him as a sexist for “vindicating the woman who irons” for being “retrograde” and that “he did not see from the NODE”. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has questioned that “she does not even know where she has the iron” and, following the line set by Faes, has ironized that “since she does not have a wardrobe, the poor thing goes all day with the same clothes”..
The expectations of the PSOE, according to the surveys, are frankly moderate, but in the party they have conspired to transmit the message that “the party is open” to stop the demobilization. For the same reason, the popular ones have wanted to lower expectations in the last days of the campaign, although they take a “loose” victory for granted.. The Socialists refuse to talk about the blockade, although they do refer to “preventing the PP and Vox from governing”, which without a sum from the progressive block that no survey has detected, except that of the CIS, would lead to an electoral repetition.