ERC would have won in the repeat elections, according to CEO opinion poll

BarcelonaPere Aragonès is the 132nd president of the Generalitat. On Friday he was sworn in, on Monday he took office and on Wednesday he held his first government meeting with the new ministers. The in extremis pact between Junts and ERC unblocked a situation that could have led to a repetition of the elections, the first in the history of Catalonia. Instead of convening the executive council, on Wednesday the legislature would have been dissolved and the countdown would have begun for elections that, according to the Centre for Opinion Studies (CEO), Esquerra would have won alone, breaking the 14-F tie with the PSC. The Republicans would have been the most benefited and would have gone from 33 to 36-37 seats in the Parliament, and would thus surpass the Socialists, who would also have grown to 34-35, and especially JxCat, the most damaged of the three major parties, which would have fallen from 32 to 28-29 seats. That is, the difference between ERC and Junts would have widened from one MP to between 8 and 9.

The survey was conducted by telephone between 11 and 19 May. Bearing in mind that the government agreement was not announced until the 17th, the answers mostly reflect the uncertainty that existed until that date. What could have become the first survey of the pre-campaign will finally be a snapshot of the strength of the political parties when the new executive is just starting to roll. And despite the tug of war between Junts and ERC in recent months, the victory of the Republicans would also have been accompanied by a strengthening of independence, which would have gone from 74 seats to between 75 and 78 seats in the Catalan chamber (50.3% of the votes without counting the extra-parliamentary formations). The CUP would have contributed to this, rising to 11 or 12 seats, according to the CEO.

The most damaged of the electoral repetition would have been, once again, Ciudadanos, at risk of disappearing from the Parliament. The survey gives it between 0 and 2 seats and only 2.4% of the votes in Catalonia. The party currently led by Carlos Carrizosa accumulates bad news since it collapsed precisely in another repeat elections: the State ones on November 10, 2019. They would also have negatively affected the expectations of Vox, which until the Madrid elections of 4 May was the fashionable party of the Spanish right: the party headed by Ignacio Garriga in Catalonia would have gone from being the fourth force with the 11 seats it won three months ago to having to settle for being the sixth with 7-8 MPs. The extreme right would have been, therefore, behind the CUP, but perhaps also behind the comuns, which would have kept 8 seats or could have gained one. For its part, the PP, which only has 3 seats, would have managed to double them. The CEO rules out that the PDECat would have been able to enter Parliament.

Oriol Junqueras is again the best valued

Despite the fact that he is imprisoned, disqualified and cannot hold institutional posts, the president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, continues to be the most highly valued politician by the public. He rises to 5.51 in a ranking in which, apart from him, the president of the CUP parliamentary group, Dolors Sabater, also passes (5.01), despite the fact that in her case she is only known by 55% of Catalans. The new president, Pere Aragonès, comes in third with 4.81, and only ERC voters (6.72) and Junts voters (5.18) approve of him. He preaches that he wants to govern "for everyone" and, at the very least, he will have to win over those of the CUP, with whom he has signed a legislature agreement, who rate him with an average of 4.58.

The leader of the comuns in Parliament, Jéssica Albiach, comes next with a 4.8 and is followed by the CUP MP Carles Riera (4.78), his party colleague in Madrid Jaume Asens (4.68), and the president of the Parliament, Laura Borràs (4.48). As Aragonès, Borràs worsens the note with respect to the pre-electoral survey of January, in spite of the fact that the two studies are hardly comparable. In fact, the first Barometer of 2021 has not yet been launched, which is usually done in March, and now the CEO, like the rest of public bodies, is pending appointments arising from the composition of the new government: it depends on the Presidency, a ministry which is now in the hands of ERC.

The ranking is closed by the head of the opposition and leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa (4.41); the socialist minister Miquel Iceta (4.06); the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont (3.90), who, as usual, receives good marks among pro-independence supporters and very poor marks among unionists; and, finally, come the representatives of the PP (Alejandro Fernández, 3.31), Ciudadanos (Nacho Martín Blanco, 2.62, and Carlos Carrizosa, 2.4) and Vox (Ignacio Garriga, 2.31). Carrizosa is, by the way, the only politician on the list to fail among voters of all parties, including his own.

Republican victory in the Spanish elections

The electoral strength of ERC, which has regained the effective presidency of the Generalitat after more than eighty years, is also evident in the Spanish elections. The Republicans come from winning the two that were held in 2019 and would again achieve victory if Pedro Sánchez decided to advance them. Despite the PSC going up, ERC would keep the 13 seats it currently has in Parliament and would even have the option of reaching 14. The socialists would follow the star by improving the percentage of vote with the prospect of obtaining between 11 and 13 seats. Like Catalunya, Junts would maintain the third position with 8 and who would lose half of the support would be Catalunya en Comú: from winning the elections in 2016 with 12 seats, it had 8 in 2019, and would now get 4. PP, Vox and CUP would get 3-4 seats, and Ciudadanos would disappear.