The modification of the balance of forces within the right center leads to the fact that in these elections Citizens (Cs) has stopped playing with the theoretical sorpasso to the PP to dispute the stability of his leadership in the measure of the results. In the orange formation they already speak internally of the future of Albert Rivera and there is a certain consensus in pointing out the red lines that, if transferred, will leave no other way out than that of resignation. The scenario has taken such a turn that according to the polls the measure of Rivera's future is "in that it manages to exceed 10 percent of the vote or avoid a fall greater than 15 seats." These conditions mark them within the orange formation, where the elections are lived with a huge concern linked to the future of the party itself. Below that 10 percent, Rivera's continuity is a very difficult balance despite the fact that in recent months he has armored with a management team even more bound in his fidelity than he had in the campaign of the generals of April.
Those who did not follow him in his personal commitment to "no is no" are gone. And along the way Cs has also left its party condition that can look from you to you to the PP to now face polls that equate with Vox and They announce a fall of more than 30 seats. The latest October report by NC Report, published by this newspaper, placed him between 22 and 24 seats compared to 57 in the April elections, leaving more than 1.8 million votes. In the last general elections it reached 15.86 percent of the vote.
In this election campaign, Rivera swims against the current in a scenario in which the PP clearly leads the right center while its more direct competitors beat each other at a more than significant distance. A situation that puts Rivera in a particularly complicated position because it is the result of the imposition of a strategy that was destined, in theory, to relieve Pablo Casado in front of the right center. For that he mortgaged his possibilities of autonomous power, subordinating himself to the PP in exchange for no one to accuse him of having been less hard than the popular in his relationship with the Socialists. And for this he also forced the resignation of Citizens to his condition as a hinge party, in the center, and born to overcome situations of blockade such as the one that has led to this new electoral repetition. Citizens was created as a hinge party to complement the PP and the PSOE and avoid both having to specify the independence seats.
Since 2015, Citizens had basically grown up with former voters of the Popular Party, so their electoral base is not center left but center right in 89 percent of cases, according to NC Report. Maintaining its main exchanges with the other two formations of the right center, Popular Party and Vox. The vote he receives or delivers to the left is neither significant nor structural and represents 11 percent of the voters. But the contribution of voters from the left center is what moderates the ideological identification of the Citizen voter
Cs already began with a bad footing the electoral campaign with the lurch of proposing in extremis an agreement to Pedro Sanchez, in which he wanted to involve the PP to avoid new elections, after having become the main spokesman of the "no" to the PSOE, and since then no survey has picked up an activation of its electorate, but on the contrary, it is still falling.
Under the pressure of some polls that coincide in forecasting an electoral debacle without palliatives, Rivera and his leadership have tried to reduce the pressure with the speech that their electorate has a hard time mobilizing in all campaigns and the polls always give them better results than those who announce the polls. The mantra that "yes it can be traced" to breathe optimism among those who have to go out and seek the vote throughout the national territory.
Albert Rivera has imposed a party model in which everything revolves around his hyper leadership. For the good, but also now for the bad. Those who have been left out reproach him, precisely, for his "caesarism," and those who remain inside, but are not at the core of the "elect" to appear on the front line., they are still wondering why the strategy the party has followed during all these months. For the first time since Citizens were born there are those who fear that what is at risk is the future of the party.
In the LA RAZÓN survey last August, after the failed investiture of July, 78.4 percent of the citizens' electorate opted for a Popular-Citizens Party coalition government with the abstention of the Socialist Party. While only 16.2 percent rejected it. After the September election call, 58 percent of the citizens' electorate held Pedro Sánchez responsible for the electoral repetition and only 6.3 percent accused Pablo Casado.
. (tagsToTranslate) carmen morodo