Rallo warns: Feijóo could throw away Spain's easiest election through blunders

Rallo warns that Feijóo could lose "the easiest election in history"

Juan Ramón Rallo put it in writing in a sentence that sums up the bewilderment of much of the centre-right electorate: Bolsonaro in Brazil and Feijóo in 2023 share a pattern, "mistake after mistake during the campaign", and the result could be losing "the easiest elections in history". The economist adds the detail that stings: prediction markets still have the Popular Party candidate as the winner. In other words, the money keeps betting on the PP while the campaign, according to Rallo, works against it. The discussion that trinc does not stop at the diagnosis. It asks why a party with the wind at its back can complicate its own life and, above all, where the votes it is leaking are going.

The plaster cat and charisma as an electoral liability

The most repeated criticism is not about policy but about skin. Feijóo is perceived as a candidate who puts off his own side: he comes across as stiff, saying whatever the polls dictate, with the natural charm of an HR manager nobody can stand. The contrast drawn is explicit: a regional premier with swagger, wit and bite can mobilise voters; a candidate who seems to be reading someone else's script cannot. And some go further: to win by a landslide, it would be enough to keep him quiet and offstage, because every appearance costs votes.

It is not a harmless thesis. If the problem is vibe rather than platform, the campaign becomes a containment operation: measure every answer, avoid contradictions, skip debates and promise more social spending than the opponent to dodge labels. That playbook, some voices argue, is precisely what guarantees never winning. The alternative suggested is the opposite: fight over the framing instead of always playing defence.

Where do the PP's lost votes go?

Here the analysis splits. One camp argues that the natural shift is not to the left but to the radical right: the lost votes would go to Vox or to emerging parties, which in bloc terms would not be a catastrophe. Another camp rebuts this with scepticism: voting for a minor option amounts, in practice, to not voting at all, and that scattered vote can indeed cost seats.

The figure hovering over the conversation is that of abstention and attrition. The dominant thesis is that the PSOE retains a mobilisable floor while the PP needs to add enthusiasm, not just subtract antiestéticar. And antiestéticar, precisely, is the argument attributed to the adversary.

The head-to-head debate as the last bullet

There is still the card of direct confrontation. Some predict that an underrated Popular Party candidate could end up beating a president who arrives overconfident, and they recall the precedent of a parliamentary debate where the rhetorical blow left the more seasoned opponent speechless. A campaign is not decided at the start, but at the end.

The exact point where the analysis gets stuck is this: if prediction markets keep backing the PP, either the money is reading something else, or the campaign has not yet moved the price. Nobody resolves it.