The sinister converter of deaths into votes

The acrobat Pedro Sánchez had the right-wing newspapers nervous with his media appearances as an impassive rock star despite the storm. The unpublished polls—the ones that really matter—showed a certain comeback for the PSOE that unsettled those who have spent the legislature fueling his eviction from the Moncloa. Since the train accident in Toledo is a factor that can change everything, the press affiliated with the PP has rushed to conduct quick polls with the idea of fixing a Polaroid that stops this notion that el Perro might pull it off again. Thus, the surveys that pepper Monday only aim to justify headlines like “PSOE stops the comeback effect and the right consolidates its majority”, as written by La Razón, which treats PP-Vox as the “right-wing” vote while Podemos and the Broad Front are branded as “far-left”. In El Mundo they make an even coarser conversion between the accident that has caused 69 deaths—so far—and the fictitious electoral count that any poll is: “PSOE loses 450,000 votes and falls below 100 seats”. They haven't dared to add “due to the accident” at the end of the headline—as they do in so many other cases of custom-made demoscopy, attributing the reasons for rises or falls out of thin air—because it would be too obscene, but the idea is perfectly understood.

If the polls appear on Monday, it means that citizens were asked who they would vote for at the moment of maximum shock after the accident. Which means the results have a very relative value: the mood will be different on November 29 because it is human nature to forget and move on. Clearly, these are balsamic polls, aimed at fixing the idea that the PSOE must pay electorally for the disaster and, above all, designed to comfort its (e)lectorate: we have everything under control, don't worry, it's all tied up and well tied up.