The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, after a rally of the PSOE campaign in the autonomous elections of Castilla y León on February 11 in Valladolid.Photogenic/Claudia Alba (Europa Press)
The surveys carried out at the beginning of March reflect the impact of the war in Ukraine and the resolution of the internal crisis in the PP.
Both episodes seem to be behind the improvement in the electoral expectations of both the PSOE and the PP, as reflected in the CIS barometer, published last week, which predicts an increase in the vote for both parties.
The reinforcement of the PSOE would be mainly due to two movements.
On the one hand, a change is perceived among the socialist electorate, which until February was undecided.
Part of this vote could be reacting to the uncertainty caused by the conflict in Ukraine, as observed in other countries (France, clearly).
Among those who voted for the PSOE in November 2019, those who are undecided have fallen by more than 300,000 since January, which have directly increased the faithful vote.
According to the CIS, today up to five million of its former voters would vote for the PSOE again, an unprecedented figure since the July 2020 barometer. In a single month, the PSOE would have recovered almost six hundred thousand voters.
The second movement that is perceived by analyzing the CIS data is a sudden change in direction of the transfers between the parties on the left.
There is a substantial increase in UP voters in 2019 who now declare that they would vote for the PSOE if general elections were held.
This is a very unstable vote, which in recent months has been swinging between the two parties.
Right now it seems clear that the position of the UP leadership in relation to the conflict in Ukraine would be directing this segment towards the PSOE.
Both movements point to a strengthening reaction of the main party in government from its political space, as occurred during the first stages of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020.
As far as the PP is concerned, a clear recovery is also observed compared to the January and February polls.
Here it seems evident that the rapid resolution of the internal crisis would be having a positive impact on the popular voter.
In this way, some 200,000 PP voters of 2019 who in January expressed their intention not to vote or did not know what they would vote in the event of a new general call, today are determined to vote for the PP again, in such a way that the popular recover to a significant part of his former supporters, who had been leaving the party since last summer.
The improvement of the PP would also be explained by the increase in its attraction over the Cs vote.
The transfer of this vote to the PP has multiplied by two compared to February and marks the record so far in this legislature.
Today almost 600,000 of the old orange voters would opt for the PP, which, together with the recovery of the vote itself, places the popular voters back at rates similar to those they showed in the fall.
The only space where movement is not appreciated is the border between the PP and Vox.
Unlike what happens with Cs, here a balance of votes favorable to the extreme right is maintained, which continues to be nourished by part of the electorate that in 2019 had opted for the PP.
Waiting to see the profile that Feijóo prints and without being able to gauge the impact that the agreement with Vox may have had to govern jointly in Castilla y León, the voter on the right seems to have interpreted that the popular have turned to the center.
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