Sánchez seeks the comeback with a final sprint in eight provinces where the seat is worth double

In the PSOE, they want to convey that there is a party. A margin for the comeback five days after the general elections of 23-J that they not only feed by appealing to the epic, that of a Sánchez who has always won “against all odds”, but also by changing his strategy in the final stretch of the campaign to focus on eight specific constituencies. Those in which, according to their surveys, they can scratch deputies from the right-wing bloc by depending on a handful of votes. A seat that is worth double when it changes hands, since it is subtracted from the right and added to the left. While the Socialists “absolutely” trust that they can turn the blocks around if they win between seven and eight seats on the right in these territories that they have “located”, Alberto Núñez Feijóo warned this Tuesday in an interview on Antena 3 that if the conservative vote is not concentrated in the PP, “there is a risk that it will not join and that we will return to sanchismo”.

Last Sunday night, the PSOE campaign management turned the strategy focused almost exclusively on the sets, without party acts, and opted to improvise rallies of its candidate in Huesca and San Sebastián. For going to fight those seats at stake by moving to the territory. Palm to palm. On Thursday it will be Lugo's turn and it is left up in the air to add another appointment to the closing of the campaign in Getafe (Madrid) to do a double with an act that morning. All this, at the cost of amputating Pedro Sánchez's international agenda, as well as an “overexertion”. This was how the head of the Executive himself described the decision that led him to travel from Brussels to Huesca, by private plane, to participate for just 20 minutes in a rally and return again as soon as he finished his speech with the aim of participating up to date following on the second day of the EU-Celac summit.

The President of the Government and PSOE candidate for re-election sacrificed on Monday the gala dinner with the Heads of State and Government offered by the President of the European Council. This Tuesday, to attend the meeting in San Sebastián. Missed joint post-summit press conference. He was scheduled to appear together with the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the President of the Council, Charles Michel; the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, and the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and rotating president of Celac, Ralph Gonsalves. He canceled both commitments at the last moment..

All this, with Spain holding the rotating presidency of the EU and with Sánchez having been personally involved in the preparation of this summit, as it is the first and most important event of the European semester.. The presence of the presidents of Brazil and Colombia, who kept their attendance on the air, was largely due to their efforts, preventing the event from being overshadowed. From the PP, they reacted by describing his absences as “an irresponsibility that compromises the role and Spanish image in the EU and in the world” and criticizing that he puts “his electoral urgency before his obligations”.

The care with which Sánchez prepared the European semester and this event, as well as his worked international profile during the last five years, was left in the background by a rally in Huesca and another in San Sebastián. Some priorities that account for how the Socialists seek to throw in the rest and are confident that their options for a comeback have to do with the double seat of a total of eight small and medium-sized constituencies. Some more, as explained in Ferraz, if they expand the perimeter from a few tens of votes to which a deputy with the PP is already at stake for a few hundred ballots.

The deputies who are “very close” to getting, according to the same sources, and those who qualify as possible. According to the fourth and last IMOP-Insights survey for El Confidencial, the Socialists are also fighting for seats with the right in Burgos, León, Soria, Pontevedra, A Coruña and La Rioja. In addition to large constituencies such as Madrid and Barcelona.

The irruption of the rallies in a campaign initially designed only with sets is complemented by the careful and economically expensive strategy in social networks. Through segmented advertising to the voters of these constituencies. Several of them in Andalusia, but also in Castilla y León and Galicia. The software called Tesela, in which the PSOE has invested 600,000 euros, allows it to identify potential voters and bombard them with specific propaganda to try to mobilize them. A key digital tool in your advertising planning for 23-J.

The margin of recovery of the Socialists is mainly focused on the useful vote. By growing at the expense of Sumar, therefore, it will be difficult for the balance between the two blocks to change substantially.. The latest polls published up to the date allowed by the electoral law coincide in concluding that there are hardly any movements between blocks. However, in the PSOE they believe it is possible to close the gap with the PP and, at the same time, for Díaz's party to ensure third place against Vox.

Each formation fulfills its role and PSOE and Sumar have decided to draw up a complementary strategy. Electoral tandem between Sánchez and Díaz, who denies the option of monocolor governments. This progressive or conservative coalition between Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal. In the territories, the majority of barons question the tandem with the vice president, considering it counterproductive, precisely because they understand that their options to grow are for the space on their left. First, concentrate the progressive vote on its initials and, after 23-J, the numbers for a hypothetical investiture will already be seen.

The maximum in the PSOE engine room is to stop the transfer to the PP of voters who supported them in 2019. Some 700,000, according to the IMOP-Insights survey for El Confidencial, which has been rocky throughout the demoscopic series. If it is not stopped, from the PSOE they will aspire to at least a tie in the form of an electoral repetition, if the sum of PP and Vox does not exceed that of PSOE and Sumar together with the nationalist bloc.

Debate to three, without Feijóo

In Ferraz, they conceive tonight's electoral debate on RTVE between the candidates of the four major parties almost as a formality, which will be three due to the absence of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. One more audiovisual space, like the television interviews on which they focused the design of this atypical campaign, to establish their message before “the maximum audience”. With the only difference that they will be able to confront their project directly with “the far-right model”. With Santiago Abascal, the “de facto vice president” of Feijóo, who would assume the representation of the right-wing block.

In the team of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, they also lower the expectations of the debate. They avoid placing great hopes in this, without attributing the possibility of becoming the expected coup during the final stretch of the campaign to turn the polls around. Of course, they say they do not downplay it and point out that the President of the Government and the PSOE candidate for re-election “will prepare it well”. The management of expectations in the face-to-face debate played a trick on them, which they now want to avoid with the three-way debate.

The approach goes through attacking Feijóo, even through Abascal, by framing him as his necessary partner. The Socialists deny the option of monocolor governments after 23-J, and assume that the leader of Vox will speak for both him and Feijóo. At the same time, Sánchez will seek to show cohesion with Yolanda Díaz, the leader of Sumar, with whom the Socialists aspire to re-edit a progressive coalition. Harmony, based on the evidence that they are two different parties, but with the conviction that they would govern with less noise and more facilities than with United We Can leading this space. Tonight's debate will be used as another opportunity to “contrast models” and address “large audiences”, but the battle of the Socialists has turned towards a final battle inch by inch in constituencies identified as strategic.