Vox plays the campaign in the 'all or nothing' of the Abascal debate against Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz
In the Vox calendar, the electoral debate this Wednesday is marked as the most important event in the final week of the campaign. Santiago Abascal attends the meeting of three convinced that the absence of Alberto Núñez Feijóo will allow him to take control of the right-wing discourse against Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz and, as a consequence, stop the transfer of votes to the Popular Party that both Vox as most demoscopic companies are detecting in recent days.
In Vox, the idea of not attending the RTVE debate between the leaders of the four main parties in the country was never on the table and they recognize that the role that Abascal plays in the meeting can “change” the dynamics of the polls. Feijóo, first in the polls and with a favorable wind, rules out participating to avoid the long-awaited photograph with Abascal that the left is looking for to denounce the embrace between the PP and Vox. In Genoa they believe that the popular president did a great face to face last week and that he should now bet on his own agenda. That he does not gain anything by going to a debate, say sources of the apparatus, in which the rest of the participants will charge directly against the one who has the most options to succeed on Sunday.
But this strategy leaves the space to the right of the PSOE completely clear for Abascal, who will lash out during the debate especially against Pedro Sánchez for embodying one by one all the policies that Vox promises to repeal if he reaches La Moncloa. Abascal will postulate himself as the true “alternative” and will harshly confront the President of the Government to establish himself as a leader who is directly opposed to Sanchismo and without half measures with socialism, in contrast to the agreement that Feijóo proposed to the socialist leader face to face to agree that both let the most voted list govern.
This, they believe in Vox, will serve as a push in the final stretch of the campaign. Asked if the debate comes too late -just three days before election day-, in Bambú they answer that it is the opposite, that it comes at the right time to finish off a campaign with its own profile and distance from all the parties. And they use the newspaper library to justify their argument: in November 2019, the last national campaign, Vox managed to mobilize more than half a million votes after the five-party debate. Of those protagonists -Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Casado, Albert Rivera, Pablo Iglesias and Santiago Abascal- only Sánchez and Abascal remain on the political front line.
debate seven
In fact, and despite the fact that the polls indicate a downward trend, the party leadership is confident that in recent days there has been a change in dynamics precisely as a result of another debate: the one held at seven, also on RTVE, in which Iván Espinosa de los Monteros participated and, as they defend in the ranks of the party, “ate” Cuca Gamarra, general secretary of the PP, especially in economic matters.
So Vox plays with the shock of the debate as the last bullet to turn the polls around, in free fall for the party since the campaign began. Feijóo's passage through El Hormiguero -which humanized his figure- and the face to face -in which he dismantled Sánchez's policies and made the president lose his nerves- deepened the open wound against Vox, to which in recent days the popular leader has added the defense of the useful vote against the question of whether Abascal will achieve representation in notable territories for Vox, such as Castilla y León or Extremadura.
The accounts in Vox are very different: the party defends that in a dozen provinces they are the ones who are a few votes away from snatching seats from the PSOE, so the true useful vote in numerous constituencies, the one that ensures an electoral turnaround for the right, resides on the Vox ballot.