The PP hopes to stop the rise of Vox in Andalusia

The president of the Andalusian Government, Juan Manuel Moreno, on April 19 in Malaga. Álex Zea (Europa Press)

The president of the Junta de Andalucía has advanced the regional elections by five months and has set them for Sunday, June 19.

Juan Manuel Moreno has made the decision, released this Monday, on the date of the elections to which he had been going around since the beginning of this month, coinciding with the national congress of the PP that elevated Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as the new leader of the popular .

The possible entry of Vox in the Andalusian Government will mark a campaign in which the Popular Party starts as the favorite.

The elections open the electoral cycle in Spain, which will culminate at the end with the general elections of 2023 if the legislature is exhausted.

More information

The elections in Andalusia will be on June 19

Had the entire mandate been rushed, the date would have been the last Sunday in November.

The argument that Moreno has used to dissolve the Andalusian Parliament ahead of time is that of the need to have a Regional Budget as soon as possible to deal with the current economic situation, since the current one has been extended.

In the event that he manages to be sworn in again, the Andalusian president wants to form a government in late August or early September and approve the 2023 accounts before the end of the year.

That is the official explanation, but he also finds reasons in the polls.

The arrival of Feijóo has slowed the rise of Vox in the whole of Spain and in the PP they trust that also in Andalusia.

However, the latest survey by the Center for Andalusian Studies (Centra) Vox is the party that is growing the most and would go from 12 to 22 seats.

The PP would get between 43-44 deputies, more than the sum of the entire left together.

That is the goal set by the formation led by Juan Manuel Moreno, in his third election as a candidate and the first as president of the Board.

In the last Andalusian elections, the PSOE was the most voted force.

It obtained 33 of the 109 seats, compared to 26 for the PP, 21 for Ciudadanos, 17 for Adelante Andalucía and 12 for Vox.

It was the first time that the right surpassed the left and the first time that the desire for a change of government, predicted by the polls, became a reality.

The rise of the extreme right will determine the strategies of all the parties.

Vox has already said that this time it does want to sit on the benches of the Andalusian Government, as in Castila and León.

The PP starts as the favorite in the twelfth Andalusian elections.

Moreno will make a campaign where he will prioritize his personal brand.

In the three years and four months that he has been president, the popular candidate has cultivated an image of a moderate person, close and far from stridency in a community where citizens are traditionally on the center-left, although the latest Centra polls show a turn to center right.

Political scientists believe that its main merit has been to normalize the right in Andalusia and disrupt the appeal to the vote of fear aired for 40 years by the PSOE.

"The story that the PP is bad for Andalusia is over," said the Andalusian president at the closing of the National Congress of the PP.

The Socialists took two years to make the decision to change the electoral poster and when they did, in June 2021 it was not in a peaceful process, but in a dog-faced primaries that former President Susana Díaz lost to Juan Espadas.

This has had to wait for the celebration of all congresses (federal, regional and provincial) of the PSOE to hit the road.

His level of knowledge is low, 53.8, according to the Andalusian CIS.

The internal polls that the PP manages give it between 45 and 46 seats and they believe that they could reach up to 50, five of the absolute majority (55 of the 109 seats) in the almost two months that remain before the elections.

The objective is to surpass the sum of all the leftist formations together, so Vox's entry into the Government would be deactivated, since it is unthinkable in principle that the extreme right facilitates a socialist government by action or omission.

Moreno will not appeal directly to Vox in his electoral journey.

His message will be to govern alone, in order to attract both the Ciudadanos voters (to whom the Centra gives two deputies compared to the 21 it took out in 2018) and those of the center-left.

"Moderate" Andalusianism will be another of the flags that the candidate will exhibit, delighted with the change of direction and leadership that he himself brought about in the national PP.

Moreno is very comfortable with Feijóo, quite the opposite of the tandem Pablo Casado-Teodoro García Egea.

Hand in hand with Moreno, the Andalusian PP has gained important weight in the new PP.

A good result in Andalusia would boost the Galician leader's race to Moncloa, but if, finally, he had to depend on Vox, the option of being able to use the achievements in Andalusia as an example of his future management would be complicated.

But in the popular ranks, the political gain that the ultra party, the only one that grows in the polls and that, according to sources consulted by both in the PP as in the PSOE, it is gobbling up votes in traditionally socialist or popular rural areas.

This situation is more worrying than the fact that provincial candidacies arise in Jaén, Huelva or Granada.

Vox, in fact, is the only party that worries Moreno's team, which is surprised, say the sources consulted, by "the low profile" of the socialist candidate, Juan Espadas.

His strategy to counteract the push of the extreme right is to step on the same ground and convince voters that those who have management experience and the ability to solve their problems, and not just act as a mere loudspeaker, is the PP, with structure in all the territories.

Andalusia was the first community in which Vox obtained parliamentary representation.

In these three years and four months of legislature, the formation of Santiago Abascal has supported three autonomous budgets, guaranteeing the necessary stability to the Government of the PP in exchange for few measures of ideological significance and little budgetary impact.

The leaders of Vox have already warned that this time they will not be satisfied with providing parliamentary support and that they will demand to enter the Government of the Junta, as they have already done in Castilla y León.

Justify the date

The political issues that tipped the balance on the side of October have weighed more than the technical ones until recent weeks, where the argument of the need to have budgets for 2023 that allow European funds to be channeled, defended by the Minister of the Treasury, Juan Bravo, it has begun to prevail.

The importance of exhausting the legislature as a sign of political stability;

the trump card of being able to wield the good economic data that is expected for the summer —in the midst of a generalized recession scenario due to the war in Ukraine and the rise in prices—, in addition to waiting for Vox to wear down in the Castilian-Leonese Board that evidenced that in power his policies are not so radical, they have been hammered to death by the president's team to endorse the October date.

For the popular now it is important to justify the change of story, so as not to lose credibility and imply that everything is due to mere electoral tactics, as the opposition accuses.

A change of course that Moreno advanced assuring that he would make the decision if the economic leaders with whom he was going to meet endorsed it, and that the Presidency counselor, Elías Bendodo -one of the main defenders of October- continued last week. by assuring that the holding of elections in June cannot be considered an advance.

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber