Feijóo has a problem. Even two. Maybe more. But one has her own name and her name is Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Sol’s tenant does not miss the opportunity to set the agenda for a PP that has gone from justification to fed up with the Madrid president. And not only because of his ways or his usual tendency to go it alone, but because his strategy, they say, diminishes more and more every day the figure of a national leader who does not quite gel.
It’s not just an impression. The feelings of those who think this way are supported by surveys – whether public or private – which indicate a clear decline in the evaluation of the head of the opposition. Here is the second problem, which may be a derivative of the first. Or not. It depends on who you ask. The fact is that when Feijóo was elected leader of the PP he scored an average estimate of 5.2 while now he is at 3.9. Among his own voters it has also fallen half a point since June 23, after going from 7.1 in October of last year to 6.6 today. Much more pronounced is the fall among centrist voters, a space where in the last two years he has lost 1.7 points. These are data from the barometers of the Sociological Research Center for April 2022, October 2023 and June 2024.
But, for those skeptical of the institute directed by José Félix Tezanos, there are also the figures from private pollsters. For example, Sociometrica (collaborator of El Español), for whom Feijóo has not exceeded the average rating of 4 for months, starting from the 4.7 it registered in June 2022. Last March, Sigma Dos (El Mundo) also detected that the Average evaluation dropped below 4 for the first time, while at the time of his arrival in Madrid, it was 4.5. In the last Invymark publication (La Sexta), he received an average score of 4.18, one of the lowest ratings in the entire series. And according to GESOP, he has also ceased to be the best rated leader: in November he obtained an average of 4.4 and from there he has been losing support until registering a scrappy 4 last May, behind Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz, despite the fact that when he took the reins of the party it exceeded 5 and his voters gave him a 7.5.
According to a survey by Simple Lógica for elDiario.es, last May only 25% of the population approved of the leader of the PP, very far from the 43% he obtained in March 2022. What’s more, only 66.1% of his Voters gave him their approval, almost ten points less than what his electorate approves of the rest of the leaders.
In view of the data, it can be said that Feijóo is not a leader who arouses enthusiasm, but citizens also increasingly trust him less and less as head of the opposition. In fact, trust in him has fallen from 35.5% in April 2022 to 21.9% today. A decline of more than 20 points among center citizens (from 38.1% to the current 17.9%), according to the CIS barometers of April 2022 and June 2024.
Leaks in the center and on the right
Since arriving in Madrid, Feijóo has lost voters who are considered “moderate” by the demos and, in addition, he also has leaks to his right. And the preference for him as president falls across the board, but especially in the center and center-right. In July 2023, 29% of Spaniards preferred Alberto Núñez Feijóo as President of the Government. Today that figure has fallen almost 11 points to 18%. Among centrist voters, he has gone from being the preferred president for 34% in July of last year to being so for only 10%. On the center right, it has fallen 30 points, from 66% in July 2023 to 30% in June of this year, according to data from the study on voting trends for July 2023 and the June 2024 barometer of the CIS.
And it also loses traction in the center. Compared to June of last year, it has fallen almost four points in direct voting intention among those who place themselves in the ideological center while the PSOE has remained stable in that space. This means that the distance separating the PP from the PSOE in the center has been reduced by half in one year: from 7.6 points advantage to only 3.5. He is no longer capable of seducing even a portion of Vox voters, for whom he is no longer the preferred president. After 23J, it became so for 22.2% of Abascal’s voters and it does not reach 4%
The data that does not go unnoticed on Génova Street has opened a double debate among popular leaders. On the one hand, if the implacable opposition strategy followed until now can be maintained over time taking into account that, contrary to the popular predictions, Sánchez is still in La Moncloa and may continue for quite some time. On the other hand, Ayuso and his desire to always set the agenda for the party is beginning to be “a problem that will have to be faced sooner rather than later because it is clearly being harmful to the national leadership.” Whoever speaks like this is a leader of the many who believe that the medal that the Madrid president has decided to award to the eccentric ultra-liberal Javier Milei is “inappropriate,” whom Felipe VI did not even want to receive in audience on his second visit to Spain.
Both the national leadership and the most relevant barons have preferred, once again, to take a stand against another Ayuso decision that the PP has not liked. Silence, however, on this occasion, does not mean concession but a deep discomfort with those who continue to “go free verse” and drawing up a strategy with the extreme right, which although it gives him votes in Madrid, weakens Feijóo in the rest of Spain .
Those who observe the leader of the Madrid PP from other territories have not overlooked her intense international agenda either, behind which some barons see a strategic decision “with the purpose of becoming an international reference in the face of a Feijóo who does not dominate the diplomatic agenda. ” beyond contacts in the European People’s Party.
Ayuso plans to travel next week, coinciding with the declaration of his partner as being investigated for the alleged commission of two crimes of tax fraud and one of document falsification, to Germany to meet with the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde , and its vice president, Luis de Guindos. And this after having already walked through Miami, Lisbon, Paris, London, Brussels, Venice, Romania, Washington, Warsaw, New York, Jerusalem or Marseille.
Milei’s medal, the frenetic international agenda, his statements, always controversial, lacking and in search of confrontation, his obsession with pointing out the path along which the PP must travel in its opposition work… Everything is the subject of an intense debate between a leadership that declares itself “fatigued by so much desire for protagonism and so much spectacle” just now that the national leadership is negotiating an agreement with the Government to renew the General Council of the Judiciary, which should be known – if it is closed – this week who enters, after Sánchez gave an ultimatum to Feijóo to end the blockade that has persisted for more than five years.
“If it is a boy or a girl,” as they say in Moncloa, “we will know soon,” but among the popular ones there are those who are in favor of exploring the path of agreement “even knowing that Sánchez can introduce some element that will blow him up in the the last moment” and those who believe, like Ayuso, that nothing should be agreed upon with the PSOE. The former defend that the CGPJ is, in addition to an opportunity to reorient the opposition strategy, an excuse for “Feijóo to mark distance” with the hyperventilation of the Madrid president, who has gone so far as to say that if the entente is consolidated “democracy “His hours are numbered.”
“Feijóo needs Sánchez to provide him with a hook that will prevent the most radical sector of the party from killing him and allow him to have a story with which to emerge successfully from the pact,” they say from the moderate sector, where they are sure that, With the sole exception of Ayuso, the head of the opposition will have the support of all the barons. Some, in fact, hope that in the coming days Feijóo will call them to tell them the details and test each one’s position.
Source: www.eldiario.es
