Noelia Arroyo, of the Popular Party (PP), mayor of Cartagena for the last two years, would win the municipal elections of 28-M by a single councilor difference with respect to the Citizen Movement (MC), of José López, and would be the only candidate with real possibilities of forming a government team. To do this, she would have to reach an ‘a priori’ complicated pact with Vox and with Sí Cartagena, the party of Ana Belén Castejón. The three could reach fourteen councilors, a figure in which the absolute majority is located in the Cartagena City Council, whose municipal corporation is made up of twenty-seven. For MC, who was the most voted in 2019 but could not govern, a hypothetical agreement with PSOE or Vox would not be enough to recover the mayoralty. He would also have to add the councilors of Sí Cartagena and Podemos to be able to govern. And such a coalition seems complicated.
This is clear from the results of the survey carried out by GAD3 for LA VERDAD on April 26 and 27, as well as on May 18, to 550 residents of the Cartagena municipality.
Estimate of councilors in Cartagena
Estimate of councilors in Cartagena
Estimate of councilors in Cartagena
PP would be the political force with the most votes in Cartagena on March 28, with an estimate of support of 30.1%, which translates into nine councilors. It would go up almost five points compared to the 2019 elections and would obtain two more representatives than then. The second would be MC, with 28.3% of the votes, which would give him a representation of eight councillors. That is, the same number as four years ago, although it would go up almost one point
Vox overtakes PSOE
The third political party in Cartagena would become Vox, led by Diego Salinas, who with an estimated vote of 13.3% would obtain four councilors. It would go up 5.3 points compared to 2019 and would win another two representatives. It would overtake PSOE, whose candidate is Manuel Torres García. The Socialists would fall more than eight points with respect to the previous elections: their vote estimate stands at 13.2%, which would give them four councilors, two fewer than then.
The PP would go up five points in voting intention and MC, one; PSOE and Podemos would fall, while Ciudadanos would disappear
Podemos-IU-Verdes-AV would maintain municipal representation, although it would also lose one of its two councilors. The candidacy led by Aurelia García would be voted for by 5.5% of the voters, losing one and a half points compared to 2019.
The GAD3 poll reflects the entry into the municipal corporation of the Sí Cartagena party, founded by Ana Belén Castejón, who has been vice mayor for the last two years, who led the PSOE candidacy in the 2019 elections. This new formation would obtain 5.1% of the votes and one representative.
As almost all the latest regional and local polls also predict, the great debacle on 28-M would be led by the Ciudadanos party, which would be left without representation in the Cartagena City Council, where it has two councilors and is part of the government team that just mandate. With an estimate of 1.7% of the vote, his candidate, Pedro Antonio Martínez, would be far from the 5% necessary to obtain representation.
municipal vote transfer
Interactive graph: tap the side color bars.
The survey carried out by GAD3 a few days before the elections yields results very similar to those predicted by another renowned polling institute, SigmaDos, for LA VERDAD last September. That survey gave eight or nine councilors to PP; seven or eight to MC; six to PSOE; three to Vox; two to United We Can and the disappearance of Cs from the City Council. At that time, Sí Cartagena was newly constituted and neither PSOE nor Vox had appointed their candidates. The survey drew a scenario of difficult governance.
Vox would overtake the PSOE as the third local force and Castejón would be elected and could be key to the formation of the government
This situation remains more than half a year later. The results of this latest survey do not give the PP the most voted force, the PP, the chance to govern alone if they are confirmed next Sunday. Nor would the meager support of a mayor of his still partners in Sí Cartagena suffice. Due to ideological affinity, the most likely option that would open up for the popular is a pact with Vox, to which it would try to add Castejón, if the party led by Salinas does not reject it due to its socialist record. The popular ones do not have many more alternatives to establish agreements with the rest of the forces that would obtain municipal representation.
MC, with few options
Nor is it easy for MC so that López can once again be mayor of Cartagena, a position he already held between 2015 and 2017. If they decided to explore the possibilities of forming a government, a pact with Vox would leave them with 12 councilors, at the mercy of the votes in against the rest of the parties in each municipal plenary session. The same would happen if the person chosen to agree was PSOE. And an agreement between the MC and PSOE with the two councilors that Podemos and Sí Cartagena would obtain to reach a majority of fourteen seems unlikely. López and Castejón already agreed two legislatures ago and ended up facing each other.
However, in Cartagena there is a recent history of complicated agreements. In 2019, the PP candidates, Noelia Arroyo, PSOE, Ana Belén Castejón, and Cs, Manuel Padín, agreed at the last minute to prevent MC from governing in a minority. That alliance was justified by the need to give stability to the municipality, after four previous years of continuous fights and scandals carried out by López in his years as mayor and vice mayor. That pact cost Castejón the expulsion of PSOE.
The people of Cartagena make a negative assessment of the Government’s management; the best scored is the one at the municipal level
GAD3 also asked the people of Cartagena for their assessment of the management of the national, regional and local governments. Regarding that of Spain, the majority (52.9) suspends the socialist Executive of Pedro Sánchez. 30.6% believe it is regular and only 16%, that it is good. As for the regional, 29% consider that the popular Fernando López Miras does it badly and 23.9%, well. 45.7% value their management as regular. As for the City Council, those who value the tripartite management as regulating (40.6%) also win compared to those who approve it (35%) and suspend it (23.2%).
Almost 40% of those surveyed consider that the situation in the Region has worsened this legislature, compared to 30.8% who consider that it has improved and 26.6% who see it as the same. Also, 56% believe that a change of government in the Region would be positive; 20.5% consider it negative and 14.4% are indifferent.
More than half of the Cs votes go to the PP, and MC is the party with the most loyal support
The MC appears in the GAD3 survey for LA VERDAD as the party with the most unconditional voters in Cartagena. 84% of his voters in May 2019 would vote for José López next Sunday. PP and Vox would only have guaranteed the vote of 63% of those who voted for them in that appointment with the polls. PSOE, 45% and Podemos, 32%.
However, the largest transfer of votes is from Ciudadanos to the Popular Party. 68% of those who gave their support to the liberal formation four years ago would now vote for the candidacy led by Noelia Arroyo. Only 11% would repeat, another 11% would vote blank and another similar percentage has not yet decided what to do. The popular ones would also receive 24% of the votes from former Vox voters and 8% from MC.
Likewise, the poll shows that MC has little traction among habitual voters of other parties: it would only receive 1% from Cartagena who trusted PP four years ago and 8% from PSOE.
The popular would lose votes to Vox (9%), Sí Cartagena (4%) and Ciudadanos (3%). Castejón’s party has its main fishing grounds among former socialist (10%) and PP (4%) voters. Podemos would lose 8% of its support, which would go to the PSOE, and it has the largest number of undecided voters: 52% of its voters in 2019 say they are not clear about it.
Survey data sheet
-
Universe
Residents in Cartagena with the right to vote. -
Ambit
Municipal. -
Dues
By sex, age and proportional geographic distribution. -
Information collection procedure
Computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) to fixed and mobile phones (50%). -
Sample size
550 in Cartagena. -
Sample error
± 4.3% (n=550); for a degree of confidence of 95.5% (two sigmas) and in the most unfavorable hypothesis of P=Q=0.5 in the assumption of simple random sampling. -
Interview duration
3-4 minutes approximately. -
Fieldwork dates
April 26 and 27, as well as May 18, 2023.
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