The PP faces the last 24 hours of the campaign without nerves, but with restraint. The massive act this Thursday in Madrid was the penultimate finale of two intense weeks with peaks and valleys, in which Feijóo has come to see himself on the verge of absolute. But now it's time to lower expectations. If you fly too high, they warn in the game, victory, which they take for granted, can end up being bitter. Despite the push of thousands of people last night clamoring “president, president!”, the leader of the PP asked for calm. He avoided taking everything for granted. “Friends, do not trust yourself. Some say that Madrid always wins. But they almost always win,” he warned. “Either we destroy them,” he said, “or Sánchez will govern”.
The atmosphere is still good, especially in Genoa. They look winners. “Easy victory”, insist the commanders. They believe that the problems of the last week do not take an excessive toll. And that the RTVE debate from which Feijóo was absent “does not move a single vote”. But in the popular ranks they warn of a loss of tension in recent days. It's time to hold your breath and take nothing for granted.. Excessive euphoria, like the one shown by Genoa and Feijóo himself last week, can bring problems. “We are facing the syndrome of the ministers,” popular sources say. It is the risk that is incurred, they say, when caressing the Moncloa with the tips of the fingers. And no one risks, not to take false steps.
Feijóo began the first week of the campaign on a cloud. The popular leader, both in public and in private, tried to call for calm. “For the euphoria of the debate to reach the electoral campaign would be an unforgivable mistake,” he acknowledged to El Confidencial. But not even he himself could contain his enthusiasm at what his polls showed. In an informal conversation with journalists last Saturday, he even assured that he saw himself with the possibility of reaching a result of 168 seats.. Only a week later, the PP considers this scenario almost impossible.
🔵 #IsTheTime to unite around a great majority.
🔵 From a country at the height of the Spanish.
🔵 That politics recover public service.🗳 #It's time for change.#VotaPP pic.twitter.com/p1v69L4xHD
– Alberto Núñez Feijóo (@NunezFeijoo) July 20, 2023
The internal tracking of the party points to an average of 155 seats in the last hours. The unknown would be if, if the forecasts come true, Feijóo will be able to keep Vox at bay. In the PP, they would sign that result without hesitation. Above 150 deputies, they point out, it would already be a great success. It is important to remember that the PP starts from only 89. Seven years without winning. It is the margin that the popular leader set himself from the beginning to tell Abascal that, if he succeeded, he would not have portfolios in his eventual Executive. The 160 do not see them as impossible either, but, again, party leaders insist on calm and on managing expectations well so as not to demobilize their voters.
In the “decisive” week of the campaign, the PP pulled the handbrake. The enthusiasm had gotten out of hand. And the feeling also began to spread that the party had lost the initiative in the final stretch. First, due to Feijóo's entanglement with the pensions on TVE, when he confronted the journalist Silvia Intxaurrondo for a false information that, later, he was forced to rectify.. The “inconcretion” or “inaccuracy” of the national leader, as he himself described it, led to a tough campaign by the left against the “lies” and “hoaxes” of the Galician. From the party leadership, they chose “not to go down into the mud” and ignore a campaign that Feijóo has faced “all his political life”. The controversial snapshot dates from 1997, although it was made public in 2013. “They got too hot. It is not understood that no one from the PP has shown the photo of Sánchez with Tito Berni, for example,” says a party leader.
The effects that these episodes will have —or not— on the vote remains to be seen. In general terms, in the PP there is no doubt that “things are going to turn out well” despite everything. That “there is no mistake of any kind that is stronger than the idea of throwing Sánchez out”. But the fear of expectations also exists. And the certainty that the tension will continue “until the end”. This Thursday, Narciso Michavila, the president of GAD3 —the PP's headline demoscopic—, veiledly urged to lower that euphoria as well. “The party, until the last vote is counted, is not decided,” he warned in the Federico Jiménez Losantos program, which has many Vox voters among its listeners. There are those who saw in that Amarrategui statement a deliberate strategy to invoke the vote of those PP voters who went to Vox to harden the position.
The truth is that, for Genoa, the great unknown of 23-J will be the resistance capacity of Vox. In the PP, they point to a collapse of the Santiago Abascal brand. They believe that the ultra-conservative leader did not know how to take advantage of the bullet of the debate against Sánchez and Díaz either. And that, at the moment, the match for third place with Sumar “is tight.” From the Vox leadership, they have been whipping up the same message for weeks. If Feijóo needs your votes, however many they may be, they will not be free. They will ask for wallets. And the negotiation, in case of sum and winning on Sunday, will be the next battle that the PP candidate will have to fight.