The "electoral decline" of Podemos

• 12-J. Pablo Iglesias has no shield: debacle in Galicia and the Basque Country despite governing
• Party. We can unload in the "internal fights" and the organizational weakness the electoral fiasco of 12-J

If you dive into the biography of Podemos, its official date of birth could be located on January 17, 2014, in the Madrid theater of the Barrio, where Pablo Iglesias and the other founders publicly presented their political project. However, the Podemos embryo began to germinate two years earlier in Galicia. In the 2012 regional elections, Alternativa Galega de Esquerda (AGE) was born, a coalition led by Xosé Manuel Beiras and in which Yolanda Díaz, current Minister of Labor, was already emerging. Pablo Iglesias was an advisor in the back room of that coalition that was the seed of Podemos. Galicia was the beginning and may have been the end of a cycle.

"AGE was the first attempt to bring the outrage of the 15-M to the polls. There was a dark adviser from Madrid, sent by IU. It was Iglesias, who saw that model and what he did with Podemos at the national level was to copy it by putting himself in the place of Beiras, in a messianic position, with a speech focused on indignation. And so he took the great leap, "reflected Anxo Lugilde , journalist and author of the book De Beiras a Podemos , a few years ago .

The purple formation closed last Sunday, in the land of Feijóo, a disastrous electoral cycle, which includes the autonomic elections held in 2019 and 2020. Regarding four years ago, 1.2 million votes and 88 deputies. An indentation that has been repeated in recent years every time the ballot boxes have been placed.

Podemos and IU added 2.8 million votes and 11 MEPs in the 2014 European elections. In 2019, going together, they fell to 2.2 million and 6 seats. More accused has been the loss of electoral muscle in national appointments. Podemos, its confluences and IU -excluding the alliance with Compromís- obtained 5.4 million ballots in the generals of 2015. No less than 62 deputies. At the appointment in November 2019, the sum is three million and 35 seats. However, despite the setback, Pablo Iglesias accomplished his goal: a coalition with the PSOE.

Foundation stone, Andalusia

One of the first victims of the downward trend in Podemos was the Adelante Andalucía coalition . The training that until a few months ago represented Podemos achieved in the autonomous communities of December 2018 a support of 16.2%. Then voices like Juan Carlos Monedero called the result "a full-blown failure" and resignations were called for. Now Teresa Rodríguez, already out of Podemos after years of dispute with the central leadership -he left the party together with Anticapitalists- , analyzes the situation thus: "Our results were analyzed as very bad and we said already then: 'Hopefully the rest of the calls will not make the Andalusian results good '. And so it has been ".

In the opinion of the former leader of Podemos in Andalusia , the reason that a lower percentage of the vote was obtained in the rest of the communities is due, among other reasons, to "foreseeing the wear of the Podemos brand, a job systematic of the powers that be by deteriorating their image and credibility, "he argued in an analysis on social networks." We analyze as flexible and positive the flexibility and adaptability of more local projects with the intention of converging confederally. "

Within the party, beyond what happened in Galicia, where Podemos disappears from the autonomous parliament, internal sources draw attention to the Basque Country . The foreign vote on Friday granted one more seat to the PP + Cs coalition, to add 6 deputies, the same as the purple formation. They warn of the difference that it is to be above the popular ones to tie, since it was presumed to be the most voted force in this community in generals and the PP was accused of being a residual force.

Lack of implementation

The latest electoral results have set off alarms in Podemos, once again confirming the lack of territorial implantation and the decrease in support that internal fights represent. "The underlying problem is what we could call a project crisis that begins in 2017. It is a short-medium term trend marked by this crisis that means, first, the organizational failure of Podemos and Unidas Podemos, beyond the organic , because it has not been able to establish itself, it does not have a deep solid root in neighborhoods, regions, towns ... And where it was established, it has disappeared, "reflects Manolo Monereo , considered a political father of Iglesias and at the time the intellectual leader of the party now distanced. "Second, he has been losing dozens of paintings."

One of the founders of Podemos, Carolina Bescansa, agrees with Monereo in pointing out 2017 as the turning point to explain the party's electoral crisis. In February of that year Vistalegre II was held, the battle between Iglesias and Errejón for the Podemos project that opened the training channel. "There is a strategy of the current leadership, which is implemented in 2017, which what it says is we exchange the accumulation of electoral power for institutional power. We do not mind losing it as long as we have institutional power," Bescansa explained this week in a forum of the Political Communication Association .

The 15-M cycle

Who until a few years ago integrated the Podemos engine room, warns that although the strategy may seem "successful", "the facts show that this strategy is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow. Sacrifice electoral power by institutional on the return around the corner leaves you without things. It is not sustainable over time. "

The arrival of Podemos to the Government, which coincided with its worst electoral result, is also pointed out as one of the factors that can cause turbulence in the purple ones , despite the fact that the debacle in the autonomy of its presence in La Moncloa . "It is paradoxical that the extraordinary success of sitting in the Council of Ministers, from the point of view of the political project, it is possible that some voters feel that this is a dissolution of the project on a path to pragmatism," observes Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí , adviser. of communication and founder and director of the consulting firm Ideograma.

The problem of wanting to have both one foot on the carpet and the other on the squares. "Some voters may interpret it as a setback, others as a great advancement that an organization that was born in the squares feels in Moncloa. It is probable that a part of the voters feel that this evolution towards pragmatism and making changes from the institutions be a renunciation of some principles of value, "adds Gutiérrez-Rubí.

This expert in political communication also points out a key moment in the brief history of Podemos, which had many consequences: «Everything that has had to do with the purchase of the villa has had a profound impact on many sectors that interpreted this as a transformation of values ​​of its leader ».

Monereo considers that one of the elements that explains the "electoral decline", as he defines it, of the Iglesias party is "the loss of link with the social conflict. Podemos and Unidas Podemos have been increasingly separated from the social conflict, from massive social struggles and has become an apparatus party. "

These four years of "electoral decline", however, now have United Podemos co-governing with the PSOE, at the head of five ministries. Hence, the people consulted do not believe that we can speak of an immediate end of cycle for Podemos. "We are seeing that the PSOE does not grow at their expense, having the option of recovering that vote that bipartisanism abandoned, now with the deterioration of United We Can , the PSOE does not advance. I think that the left of the PSOE still has significant political capital "Gutiérrez-Rubí explains. And he adds: "Podemos and its leader have plenty of room for maneuver in difficult conditions to visualize themselves and move on."

Bescansa does not see the end of Podemos either, but it does see an end of the 15-M cycle . "Podemos has been losing support consecutively and each time with harder blows. The same acceleration of political time that occurred to allow Podemos to enter Congress, that same acceleration may be applying in decomposition. The closing of the cycle of the 15-M is going to close before the Podemos cycle, which is going to exist much longer. "

A party united in the image of the leader

The Podemos political project has been increasingly concentrated on Pablo Iglesias and his core of power. Faced with the "group of comrades from very different backgrounds" that it proclaimed in January 2014 at the Barrio theater, the party has mutated into a monolithic block where differences or criticism are not part of it. This supposes an absolute identification of the project with Iglesias.

"United We Can today, to a large extent, has the assessment that its leader has. No one of the leading team is in the first place except Iglesias, it is a process of attrition and change in the leading nucleus that causes that around Iglesias the foundational leadership has not been maintained and that puts pressure on his image and his performance as a choral leader. They initially showed a choral idea of ​​leadership and today it does not exist, "summarizes Antonio Gutiérrez-Rubí.

Anxo Lugilde already summarized in 2015 the leadership of Iglesias in this way: 2 He took from Beiras what I call assembly messianism. A rather peculiar process in which while the messiah and the assembly want the same there is no problem. The question is when the assembly says to the messiah no. "

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• We can
• PSOE
• United We Can
• Galicia
• IU
• Pablo Iglesias
• PP
• Yolanda Diaz
• Go ahead Andalusia
• Andalusia
• Carolina Bescansa
• Citizens
• Basque Country
• Commitments
• Madrid
• Juan Carlos Monedero
• Galicia Elections
• Andalusia Elections

12-JThe PSOE stagnates and does not extract revenue from the collapse of Podemos in the Basque Country and Galicia

Galician Elections 2020: Alberto Núñez Feijóo achieves his fourth absolute majority, the BNG reaches second place and Podemos disappears

12-JMap of the elections in Galicia: see who has won in each municipality

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