Concha Andreu, the first socialist president of La Rioja, is not guaranteed re-election in the regional elections on the 28th. Less than a month before the elections, the PP unseats the PSOE as the leading force in the region and regains hegemony which he maintained for more than two decades. The difference between the two forces, of only five points, yields practically a tie in seats between the two main La Rioja parties that would have to forge alliances to reach the autonomous government.
The survey carried out by Simple Lógica for elDiario.es between April 18 and 26 suggests that Andreu, with 35.6% of the votes and between 13 and 14 seats (in 2019 he obtained 15), needs in any case to add the two seats from Podemos-IU, as happened in 2019 with Unidas Podemos, which at that time was divided in two with the entry of Podemos into the Executive while IU supported it from outside. In the best of scenarios -14 seats-, in order to reach the 17 representatives with whom an absolute majority is reached in the La Rioja parliament, the Socialist also requires the support of the only seat that the poll grants to the coalition between the Party Riojano, of a regionalist nature, and España Vaciada (PR+EV).
The PP candidate, Gonzalo Capellán, who was a counselor in the Pedro Sanz stage, requires the support of Vox to be able to reach the Palacete, seat of the regional government, and recover one of the traditional popular squares. The Simple Lógica poll gives the applicant 41.2% of the votes and between 14 and 15 seats (between two and three more than the 12 achieved in 2019), therefore, in the best scenario –15 seats– , Capellán only needs the sum of the two representatives of the extreme right to reach an absolute majority. At worst –14 representatives–, he will also require the PR + EV seat, as is the case with the PSOE.
La Rioja is one of the communities that the PP has as a priority objective in the elections on May 28. Governed since the end of the last century by the right without interruption for 20 years, until 2019, the strategists of Alberto Núñez Feijóo count on recovering it and making it one of the conquests that will serve as a lever for the Galician in the subsequent campaign of the generals. In this sense, the Simple Lógica poll is good news for the popular, since it does not grant representation to Por La Rioja, a split from the PP itself led by a heavyweight of the party, Alberto Bretón, former government delegate in the region, former councilor regional representative, former regional deputy and former PP senator, among other regional and organic positions.
Bretón is a politician with three years in the Riojan PP. But in January he decided to leave his act of regional deputy and abandon the militancy of his party to found another. The trigger: were the complaints of a lack of internal democracy and the designation from Madrid of the bicephaly that has led the organization in recent months, with Alberto Galiana as organic president and Gonzalo Capellán as a candidate. The decision of the Feijóo leadership led to the planting of a part of the militancy, which claimed their right to what the statutes establish to choose their leader: an internal congress.
The militants addressed their complaints to the national leadership in general, but especially to Cuca Gamarra. The general secretary, ‘number two’ of Feijóo, has an important weight in the region, despite the fact that she lost the last internal congress that was held in 2017. Gamarra was mayor of Logroño between 2011 and 2019. Her weight in the regional PP is evidenced by the fact that the current ‘number two’ of the PP, contributed to the Government of La Rioja becoming a kind of placement agency for related and acquaintances of the party during the mandate of Pedro Sanz –recently elected member of the Council of State–, between 1995 and 2015, as revealed by elDiario.es last month.
All in all, the new party led by Bretón in principle will not make a dent in the PP, at least in the transfer of seats. What the Simple Lógica survey shows is that the strength of the popular and their hypothetical return to the Palacete will depend on the transfer of votes to Vox, the extreme right formation that enters the La Rioja parliament with 7.1% of the votes and two seats. Ciudadanos, which in 2019 obtained 4 representatives in the autonomous chamber, however, now remains without representation, achieving only 1.4% of the votes.
The one that does overcome the 5% barrier and, therefore, obtains a seat in the Rioja parliament is the coalition of the Rioja Party and Empty Spain (according to the poll, it achieves 5.4% of the votes) that in a At first it was going to run in the elections under the La Rioja Ahora brand, but in the end it has chosen to keep the acronyms of the two parties that make it up: one regionalist and the other framed between the formations of the country as a whole that demand policies to deal with the loss of population and opportunities in their territories.
The coalition of Podemos and Izquierda Unida maintains its weight in the regional chamber with two seats. The candidacy is headed by the current IU regional deputy, Henar Moreno, and has Raúl Pérez, from Podemos, as number two.
Regarding the popularity of the main political leaders of the region, the current president, the socialist Concha Andreu, is the one with the highest percentage of approval but also censure. In fact, there are more people from La Rioja who disapprove of its management (42.9%) than those who approve it, 37.7% of the citizenry.
The dynamic is repeated with the PP candidate. 31.6% of people from La Rioja disapprove of it compared to 21.2% who endorse it. In the case of Henar Moreno, candidate for Podemos-IU, approval is 15.9% and disapproval is 29.7%. In the case of the PR+EV candidate Inmaculada Sáenz, the positive assessment is 12.6% and the negative, 20.8%. And in that of Vox, Ángel Alda, the approval is barely 4.2% and the suspense, 13.4%. The remaining percentage in the case of all the candidates responds to that of the people from La Rioja who choose not to value the applicants.
As for those surveyed who with a high probability will vote in the next regional elections of La Rioja, according to the memory of voting in those of 2019, the greatest fidelity is that of left-wing voters. 88.9% of those who supported United We Can and 82% of the socialist electorate will go to the polls, compared to 72.8% of PP voters and 79.6% of Vox.
