• Poll The recovery of Podemos complicates the absolute majority to Ayuso
  • Encues Almeida grows at the expense of the disappearance of Villacís but depends on Vox

Just 24 hours before the end of the electoral campaign, Pedro Sánchez has blamed this Thursday the parties of the right of "not stopping muddying it" after the arrest of charges of the PSOE in the towns of Mojácar (Almería) and Albudeite (Murcia) for the alleged purchase of votes. The President of the Government has not made any explicit mention of this matter in the rally he has given this afternoon in Madrid with his candidates for the regional government, Juan Lobato, and the City Council of the capital and has diverted the focus of criticism to the PP and Vox.

In addition, Sánchez has made an appeal on Thursday to the useful vote of the left in Madrid next Sunday concentrating it in the PSOE. This, he said, is the only way to point out "the door of the exit to the right" and say "goodbye" to the current regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, both candidates for re-election by the PP.

The battle for Madrid

The appointment of Maroto was a personal bet of Sánchez himself that generated many doubts in a wide sector of the party in Madrid due to his low degree of knowledge despite having been part of the central government for almost five years. According to all the polls, the former Minister of Industry will improve the result of the PSOE in 2019 – when she harvested her historical minimum of eight councilors in the Plenary of Cibeles – but she will not be able to overtake Más Madrid – which is now headed by Rita Maestre – in her first elections without Manuela Carmena in the poster.

Even so, in Ferraz they insist that the current mayor of the capital and candidate for re-election, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, is a "vulnerable" candidate and do not completely rule out the possibility that the sum of the parties of the left can overcome the block formed by the PP, Vox and Citizens, in the event that Begoña Villacís obtained representation. In other words: his best scenario would be to achieve the Vice Mayor's Office in a coalition led by the split of Podemos after the rupture between Pablo Iglesias and Íñigo Errejón.

In the case of the Community of Madrid, on the other hand, in the socialist dome they have not glimpsed at any time any real option of being able to unseat the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on which the only doubt they have is whether she will achieve the absolute majority of 68 deputies in the Assembly of Vallecas or will remain touching it. So the goal for Sánchez here is to regain the leadership of the opposition that in 2021 was snatched by Monica Garcia by a margin of 6,593 votes.

The responsibility of achieving it falls on Lobato, who, unlike Maroto, prevailed in a primary to lead the party of the region without the support of the apparatus in which he defeated the mayor of Fuenlabrada, Javier Ayala, representative of the most left wing of the PSOE. At the moment only one survey of all those that have been published in recent months – prepared by GAD3 – predicts a sorpasso that if it does not occur would leave the former councilor of Soto del Real in a delicate internal position despite improving the result that Angel Gabilondo achieved two years ago.

  • PSOE
  • Pedro Sanchez
  • Reyes Maroto
  • Juan Lobato
  • Articles Marta Belver

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