Mónica García's handicap against Ayuso and Lobato: Más Madrid will not be presented in most municipalities in the region

The leader of Más Madrid, Mónica García, together with deputy Javier Padilla. Borja Sánchez-Trillo (EFE)

Mónica García, leader of Más Madrid and of the opposition in the regional Assembly, is presenting herself for the revalidation of the municipal and regional elections on May 28 with a handicap: her party will only appear in some 60 municipalities of the 179 that exist in the region.

The data reflects that the political revelation of the May 2021 elections, which catapulted the platform founded by Íñigo Errejón and Manuela Carmena to be the reference of the Madrid left, starts with a potential disadvantage in the fight that it will maintain with the PP of Isabel Díaz Ayuso (for the regional presidency) and with the PSOE of Juan Lobato (for the leadership of the left).

The 2021 elections were only regional.

Now the municipal ones are also voted.

And for voters to choose a different party in each constituency seems like a greater challenge than choosing the same acronym in both ballot boxes.

Although there are very recent precedents to the contrary: for example, in 2019 Ángel Gabilondo obtained twice as many votes as Pepu Hernández in the capital, despite the fact that both represented the PSOE.

The debate is therefore open.

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Mónica García, the spokeswoman for the street and the operating room

“Mónica ran in the 2021 elections, and that is why there are already many people who have put the Más Madrid ballot on it, which is already an established brand.

The

it is raffled because there is already that memory of the vote ”, argues a source from the party's electoral committee.

"Furthermore, the percentage of the population with the right to vote that will not have a municipal ballot for Más Madrid is very small: around 8%," continues this interlocutor, who points out that the almost 60 lists on which the party will be (some in coalitions that it will not lead) will reach 92% of Madrid residents, which is a step forward compared to the 31 lists of 2019. “Most of the population is concentrated in the capital and the large municipalities of the red belt, the corridor del Henares and the mountains”, he describes.

“The rest are municipalities with a small population, and for a party that has been forming in recent years, and that in the middle has also had to stop everything to run in extraordinary elections,

You cannot consider appearing there ”, he adds.

But he admits: “Obviously the parties with a long tradition with greater territorial implantation have that advantage, that of consolidated structures.

We have others."

The

, a concept inherited from the US elections, is at the heart of the campaign of the main parties in the region.

The PP considers that the duo formed by President Díaz Ayuso and Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida is unbeatable.

The PSOE hopes that the landing of a minister like Reyes Maroto in municipal politics will help establish a project commanded in the Community by a leader, Lobato, who has been leading the organization for a little over a year.

And Más Madrid bets everything on the multiplier effect that uniting García with Rita Maestre can have.

A formula of mutual feeding in which it will not be able to rely on in the majority of municipalities in the region.

"In my opinion, yes, it could have some influence, to the extent that, when municipal and regional elections are held simultaneously in the Community of Madrid, what is voted in the municipal and regional elections can have a reciprocal drag effect, especially in large municipalities where the people who appear on the municipal list can have less influence on the voter's decision to vote”, analyzes Carlos Fernández, professor of Constitutional Law at UNED and doctor of Political Science.

“There is the

, but it does not condition the profile of the voter of Más Madrid so much.

It tends to affect traditional parties more”, contrasts the consultant Eduardo G. Vega, who also does not see an insurmountable handicap in that Más Madrid is not present in all municipalities.

"This is done for a strategic issue," he says.

“It is clear that the more places there are your ballots, there are always more options to vote for you, logically.

But this is studied previously and you rule out those places where you already know that you will not have the minimum necessary result (due to ideology, knowledge...) and therefore it is not worth investing resources (money and effort to make a list, campaign, structure... .)”, he details.

And he concludes: "Therefore, it does not influence and if it does it will be something minimal."

"Mas Madrid, must campaign for the autonomous region with special emphasis on the municipalities where it does not present a candidacy for City Hall, so as not to lose space in the minds of the electorate, but with the important asset of having a solid candidate for the Community of Madrid, or even asking for the vote for a municipal candidate with whom they can ally themselves, to cover their inability to represent themselves in the municipality”, recipe Paloma Román Marugán, from the Department of Political Science and Administration of the Complutense University of Madrid.

Although the electoral map for 2023 is still being defined, Más Madrid will have a presence in all cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, in most of them with 50,000, and in many of those with up to 15,000, according to a second interlocutor from the party leadership.

Thus, Más Madrid has to offer its ballot to voters in Madrid, Móstoles, Leganés, Getafe, Pozuelo, Villaviciosa, Parla, Alcalá, San Fernando, Alcorcón, Móstoles, Getafe, Parla, Pinto, Aranjuez, Valdemoro, Alcobendas, San Sebastián de los Reyes, Colmenar, Tres cantos or Rivas (in the last two, for example, it will be integrated into electoral coalitions).

The challenge is huge.

In the 2021 regional elections, all the municipalities in the region, except for two, Fuentidueña de Tajo and El Atazar, were dyed blue, the color of the PP, because their neighbors mostly supported the conservative leader.

And the conservatives added more seats than the entire left combined.

To vary this balance, the PSOE relies on the weight of its municipal organizations, now that mayors are also elected: the Socialists govern some of the most populated cities in the region (Móstoles, Alcalá de Henares, Leganés, Getafe, Fuenlabrada... .) and they hope that this can generate a multiplier effect in favor of Lobato.

More Madrid does not have that weapon.

In her case, therefore, a lot will depend on what happens in the capital, the city with the most voters: without Carmena as a candidate, transferring the flow of 2019 votes to the regional level will be key for a party that cannot trust her. offset potential losses with gains in the small municipalities of the Community.

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