Who do left-wing voters want in the Moncloa?

MadridWhile the space to the left of the PSOE is still debating leaderships and negotiating in extremis a formula to achieve unity, the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) has predicted an improvement in the result of the progressive bloc as a whole. According to the public body to which demoscopy experts have long attributed a bias towards the left, the PSOE and the Broad Front –without counting the rest of the plurinational majority– could add up to a higher percentage of the vote than that of the PP and Vox. However, beyond this preference for a progressive government pointed to by the CIS –unlike what other private polls indicate–, the October barometer published this Wednesday also places some proper names as the favorites to reach the Moncloa.

Among the electorate as a whole, according to the CIS, the preferred candidate to be president of the Spanish government is Pedro Sánchez, who stands as the spontaneous response of 25.8% of those surveyed. The next leader of the left most mentioned by the public, with 8.1% of responses placing him as the one they like the most, is the ERC spokesperson in Congress, Gabriel Rufián. After the republican comes Yolanda Díaz (2.2%) and Irene Montero (1%). However, the former will not run in the elections this time. It will be the former mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, who heads the ballot that three and a half years ago carried the brand of the second deputy prime minister of the Spanish government. However, in the October CIS, conducted before Colau was designated as the leader of the Broad Front, the leader of the Comuns does not appear.

According to the barometer data based on voting recall in the 2023 general elections, the preferred politician of those people who voted for the Sumar candidacy, headed three and a half years ago by Yolanda Díaz, is not any leader of the parties that make up the Broad Front (Més Madrid, Comuns, IU, and Sumar) but rather it is Rufián. The republican candidate is the favorite of 29.9% and surpasses not only Díaz (8.1%) but also Irene Montero (7.6%) and the current Spanish president. Sánchez is, in fact, in second place and is the favorite of 27.5% of the voters who chose Sumar three and a half years ago.

Conversely, the CIS data indicate that Sánchez is indeed the preferred option for ERC voters. The socialist is the most mentioned, in 38.2% of the responses, as the favorite to reach the presidency of the Spanish government, while Rufián is the choice of 27.5% of those who bet on the republican ballot and Díaz of 2.3%. As for those who voted for the PSOE, Sánchez is the favorite for 54.9% while Rufián is for 9.7%, Díaz for 3.4%, and Montero for 0.5%.

The dispute for unity

Popular support is one of the arguments that Podemos has put forward to defend that Rufián and Montero should head the left-wing candidacy. According to the 'purples', it is the tandem "that really responds to what the people are asking for" and they maintain that it should be the Broad Front that adapts to this formula of collaboration between them and ERC. Montero, in fact, has argued that "she will respect the result of what the majority says" that votes in the primaries organized by her party, even though her candidacy is the only one that has been submitted to this vote. On the contrary, the Broad Front is betting on Podemos integrating into its candidacy led by Colau in Barcelona and Emilio Delgado (Más Madrid) in the Spanish capital. The former mayor has offered to step aside as leader of the candidacy to facilitate the agreement.