- Galicia.The CIS predicts a comfortable victory for Feijóo, which would reinforce its absolute majority on 12-J
- Basque Country.The CIS increases the PNV's advantage in the Basque Country and rules out the collapse of Podemos
The strangest electoral campaign for democracy is underway in the communities of Galicia and the Basque Country, which will hold regional elections on 12-J. There will be no rallies to the use, nor large concentrations of militants around the candidates, beyond those that allow the sanitary norms -masks and a distance of one and a half meters- to prevent the disease foreseen in the decree of the so-called new normality.
The elections were scheduled for April 5, but the eruption of the coronavirus made them impossible. Iñigo Urkullu and Alberto Núñez Feijóo were not willing to postpone them beyond the summer, fearing a second wave of Covid-19, and set a date after consulting with experts.
Both communities ended the state of alarm and began de-escalation before the rest. The Basques and Galicians will go to vote with a mask at electoral colleges equipped with all prevention measures. In such exceptional circumstances, participation will measure the interest of citizens in going to the polls to choose their autonomous governments.
The pandemic has claimed thousands of deaths, has altered the lives of citizens and has left a serious economic and social crisis in the offing, but it will not alter the electoral map of both communities. All the polls indicate that the Basque and Galician presidents will comfortably revalidate their victory of four years ago, with more votes and more seats in the case of the Lehendakari .
Leadership in their territories
The autonomic ones of 12-J are the fourth elections to which the Galician PP leader is presented and the third to which the PNV candidate, the only party in which the Lehendakari is not the party's president, attends .
The management of the pandemic, whose strictly sanitary scope has corresponded to the governments of the autonomous communities, has underpinned the already very solid leadership of Feijóo and Urkullu. Both, with the profile of effective managers and moderate leaders, have had a special role in the presidents' conferences with Pedro Sánchez that have been held every Sunday during the validity of the state of alarm.
Both Urkullu and Feijóo have been very demanding when it comes to demanding more paper for the communities when the Government requested the successive extensions of the state of alarm and the prompt opening of economic activity. Although in a different way, Feijóo and Urkullu have built their leadership around identification with their territories.
In the case of the PNV - an independence party that for a pragmatic reason acts as a moderate nationalist - there is no doubt. But the Galician PP of Feijóo has also manufactured a kind of nationalistic regionalism that identifies this party with Galicia. And that is giving him a comfortable absolute majority and a voting intention that almost doubles the second party, the PSOE. Symbolically, the candidate Feijóo hides the initials of the PP in all campaigns, with the clear message that he means something different from what his party is at the national level
Feijóo, the envy of the PP
The Galician leader is the only president of his party who enjoys an absolute majority and will continue to be so if the prediction of all the polls is fulfilled. Feijóo is free from the national leadership led by Pablo Casado, whom he supported in the congress that he refused to appear. Without dissimulation, the Galician president marks distances in the background and in the way with the style of doing politics of the young people who lead the PP, to whom he asks for moderation and a sense of State.
Feijóo's ability to keep at bay in Galicia first Citizens and then Vox is the envy of the entire PP, and gives him a kind of moral leadership that is very annoying for the national leadership. The Galician socialists and the so-called tides that arose in the heat of the 15-M have never represented - not now - a threat to the hegemony of the Galician PP.
For his part, Iñigo Urkullu governs in coalition with the PSOE, but has undisputed leadership. The Lehendakari has garnered some criticism for the health management of the pandemic, and is still suffering the political consequences of the Zaldibar landfill tragedy with two workers still missing. In spite of which, the PNV has obtained - as usual - many revenues from its support for the decrees of the state of alarm and all the polls predict a significant growth in votes.
Urkullu and the PSOE
Transfers granted by the central government in exchange for the PNV's parliamentary support include basic income management. The Basque PSOE seems comfortable in its role as a subsidiary of the PNV, and the hypothesis of an alternative government with Podemos and Bildu has been ruled out. The importance of the PNV in national politics - as a support for the Pedro Sánchez Government - undoubtedly favors its institutional role and broadens its electoral base in the Basque Country until it retains the majority of the PP's votes.
Forecasts indicate that the Socialists also recover some of the lost vote. One of the novelties of the autonomous communities of 12-J is the PP-Citizens coalition. Casado headed Alfonso Alonso to put Carlos Iturgaiz in his place at the head of that candidacy, an operation that will be unsuccessful if the meager results forecast by the polls are confirmed.
The results of the Galician and Basque elections, beyond the joys and sorrows of the electoral night, are not called to have too many consequences for national politics.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more- Alberto Núñez Feijoo
- Inigo Urkullu
- Galicia Elections
- Basque Country Elections
- PP
- PNV
- PSOE
- Citizens
Basque CountryThe PNV would achieve up to 31 parliamentarians on 12J according to a Basque Government survey that penalizes PP and C's
SpainA walk through the false Basque oasis of Urkullu
12-JPedro Sánchez is examined from Covid-19 on 12-J and Pablo Casado sails between the two wings of the PP
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