With five days to go before the Catalan election, and after the last ElNacional.cat opinion poll allowed by the electoral law before the deadline at midnight Monday night, we can affirm that the result on May 12th remains open. It is true that Catalan Socialist (PSC) candidate Salvador Illa maintains an advantage of between three and five seats over Carles Puigdemont of Together for Catalonia (Junts), but in the last days the Catalan president-in-exile has significantly reduced the difference, which was between six and eight seats in the previous study released by the Feedback pollsters on Saturday night. The new survey, with data coming right up to Monday morning, seems to definitively remove the "Spanish-izing" effect on the election caused by Pedro Sánchez, a subject which we will have to return to one day over his attempt to distort the campaign with the fictitious story of his presumed resignation, and the elections to Parliament are entering the last few days in a distinctly Catalan tone.
We will see if the campaign ends up being too long for Salvador Illa or, on the contrary, he is able to retain the role of favourite given to him by the polls. Everything will depend on the mobilization of his rivals. It is a no-brainer that there exists an electoral space shared by pro-independence voters who, to complicate things, are of differing ideological sensitivities. It is in this space that there could be a turnaround in the result indicated by the polls. Which in political jargon would be to give the candidate another chance, even if if they do so grudgingly. Leaving their comfort zones and voting to prevent the PSC from winning and maybe ruling. The fact that, in all the polls published by ElNacional.cat, the Catalan Socialists have not been able to overcome the 39-40 seat bracket indicates that, if we leave aside the illicit propaganda of the public CIS polling agency and its ineffable director Tezanos, the mobilization of the parties following in pursuit will be the definitive element.
The leading pursuer, Carles Puigdemont, faces the final week in conditions that only a month ago seemed impossible. He could lose the election... but he could also win it. His candidacy, based on rather precarious means, has given luster to a political capital forged in the years of exile, to his appeal to the recovery of Catalan pride and to his management as president of the Generalitat between January 2016 and October 2017, including such difficult moments as the terrorist attack on the Rambla and the failed attempt by Mariano Rajoy's government to remove the Mossos from the police command. The forecast of 33-36 seats that appears in the survey forces him to do three things to aspire to victory: draw a percentage of voters out of abstention, win back moderates who prefer Junts for its economic programme and be credible in his call for a concentration of the pro-independence vote. It doesn't depend on one single action, but a convergence of all three.
Carles Puigdemont, faces the final week in conditions that only a month ago seemed impossible. He could lose the election... but he could also win it
The third figure in the race, who is also third in the polls, Pere Aragonès, reaches the final stretch of the campaign in an unwanted scenario. All the polls place him third. And he has another problem: just as, in its best moments, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) was able to capture votes from many parties, now it is vulnerable to pilfering from all the same sources. In fact, its electorate is the least loyal of the major parties. This handicap may end up being lethal in the final event for the Republicans. Although no one is thinking anymore about the scenario of a pro-independence parliamentary majority, because they can see before them the result of the 72 parliamentarians won in 2021, a majority which ended up disintegrating in two phases, first through the ERC-CUP split and then ERC-Junts, the fact that there is a prediction of between 62 and 70 MPs, leaves it as practically impossible, but not definitively. In any case, this circumstance harms the CUP the most, given that their votes may seem, unlike on other occasions, useless.
One last fact: the tie between the People's Party (PP) and Vox is very bad news for Feijóo's party if it ends up happening. In the midst of the retreat of the far right in the municipal and Spanish elections, this possible result would shake the main party of the Spanish right and once again question the political strength of its Galician leader. His pusillanimous nature when it comes to setting a strategy different from that of Ayuso appears as a burden in Catalonia.