Everything seems to indicate, given the polls that are appearing, that the main nationalist party of the Canary Islands will suffer a severe setback in the upcoming 2019 regional elections. Coalición Canaria (CC), a priori, would decrease considerably in its electoral support, confirming the downward trend it has been suffering in recent elections. But, is there a glimmer of hope for the nationalist formation? In my opinion, not everything is as bleak as it seems.
In the Canary Islands, as in other Autonomous Communities, there are two dimensions of electoral competition: the ideological dimension "left-right", and the territorial dimension "center-periphery" (or identity). Therefore, any political formation that wants to establish itself in this context must ask itself the following question: which dimension will get me the most support possible? In turn, and following the pattern proposed by Sani and Sartori, a distinction should be made between two competencies: the defensive, which aims to not lose voters installed in "exclusive electoral markets", and the expansive, which seeks to win voters in "competitive markets" with other parties. Nationalist parties like CC would face a crossroads if they opt for defensive competition, since they would leave the ideological axis free in order to maintain an electorate that weighs territorial aspects more heavily. On the other hand, if they opt for the expansive, tension would be generated when competing in other electoral markets, since should they emphasize the similarities or the differences with respect to their competitors? The consolidation of NC on the territorial axis has caused CC to see the distinctive message it possessed with respect to the rest of the parties in danger, and the appearance of new formations such as Ciudadanos in the ideological dimension causes them to minimize socioeconomic aspects and emphasize nationalist differences. It is a game that must be resolved soon if they want to get out of the electoral debacle.
However, every electoral struggle presents two aspects: the existence of voters identified with specific parties, and the existence of voters not identified with any party. The fight for this last electorate is the great battle that the formations wage, since whoever manages to attract them has a high probability of emerging victorious. Now, in which competitive dimension should this battle be fought? Taking into account that there is a decline towards the "nationalist", generated to a certain extent by the Catalan conflict, the foreseeable thing is that the competition will be directed towards the ideological dimension, especially when in the party system there is a majority of formations of national scope. Would Coalición Canaria be negatively affected if it reinforces the ideological axis above the territorial one? In my opinion, no. Its electorate weighs this dimension more heavily, which leaves it room to emphasize it and not lose support in its loyal sector.
The averages in Table 1, obtained from the Autonomous Barometer of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) of 2012, confirm that the CC voter feels closer to their party on the ideological axis than on the nationalist one. The personal self-location in this dimension is on average 5.38 (on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means extreme left and 10 extreme right), and the average location of the voters to their party is 5.39, practically identical. In contrast, on the nationalist axis, the CC voter tends to move their party to a more nationalist position than their own, being 5.25 for the personal and 6.42 for the party (on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means minimum nationalism and 10 maximum nationalism). Regarding the totality of the sample, that is, what all the respondents answer regardless of which party they vote for, CC would be on average in the nationalist scale in a position of 6.14, and in the ideological 5.51.
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What emerges from this two-dimensional table is that, in an electoral context where two dimensions converge at the same time, the CC voter, when weighing which is their preference to approach their formation, opts for ideological aspects above the nationalist one. Therefore, this fact would leave room for the party to "neglect" the territorial aspect and advance in that axis in search of new voters. This would not be a peculiar aspect in comparative perspective, since there are many political science studies that have highlighted that nationalist parties have been leaving aside territorial or identity aspects in favor of emphasizing the left-right dimension.
Thus, the orderly decline presented by the Canarian hegemon could be appeased if they concentrated the electoral competition in an expansive way, targeting center-right sectors, in turn, niches of Ciudadanos and PP, the main parties that take away support in this dimension. However, this does not mean that the nationalist axis is unprotected, given that NC would be watching closely to collect the voter that comes off CC. It is convenient for Fernando Clavijo's party to emphasize a transversal discourse, merging political aspects of a nationalist character with other ideological ones that allow it to stop the transfer of the conservative vote.
With everything, it only remains to wait for the electoral clock to start and for the parties to show their discursive strategies. We are facing a crucial moment in Canarian politics, since the end of 25 years of nationalist government could be approaching. Whether it is fulminating or orderly depends on what CC is capable of transmitting to an electorate that is increasingly volatile and with more political options to choose from. @ayoze_uam
* Methodological notes: 1. The partisan averages in Table 1 are obtained by valuing the CC voters to their party (average of the voters). The averages of the sample are the valuations of all the voters to CC and, finally, the self-location refers to the own average of the CC voters, that is, the own personal locations in the two dimensions. 2. Making use of parametric tests for the comparison of averages, it is evidenced that the difference in the nationalist scale between the electorate and the party are statistically significant. 3. The Autonomous Barometer for the Canary Islands 2956 has been chosen because it is the only one that presents, simultaneously, the questions about ideological and nationalist scale.
By Ayoze Corujo Hernández. Political scientist from the Autonomous University of Madrid and Master in Political Analysis from the Complutense University of Madrid.