On May 28th, Xavier Trias could regain the mayoralty of Barcelona, from which he was displaced by the current mayor, Ada Colau, eight years ago. With exactly four months to go until the municipal elections, the Together for Catalonia (Junts) candidate is clearly ahead in the race, with space between him and his closest pursuer, the leader of the Catalan Socialist (PSC) list, Jaume Collboni. Colau and her Barcelona en Comú (BComú) candidacy are displaced to third position in the mayoral race, with Ernest Maragall, Republican Left (ERC) candidate and election night winner of the 2019 elections, in fourth place. This is the conclusion of a public opinion survey of Barcelona voters prepared by the Feedback Institute, directed by Jordi Sauret, for El Nacional.cat. The survey is based on a sample of 600 telephone interviews carried out this week, between last Monday January 23 and this Thursday January 26.
According to the poll, Trias would win 11-12 councillors, that is, 6-7 more than the 2019 Junts candidacy and 23.10% of the votes. In the previous elections, Junts came fifth, with 5 councillors. The list led by Trias thus shows the biggest increase in both the number of councillors and the percentage of the vote, 12.59% more than four years ago. In 2011, Trias became the first Barcelona mayor for the Convergència i Unió (CiU) party with 14 councillors. But he lost the mayoralty in 2015, when he only captured 10 councillors, surpassed by Colau, with 11. Trias announced last December his return to the mayoral race after the departure of the previous Junts leader in Barcelona city hall, Elsa Artadi, last May. Trias retains 57% of Junts voters from 2019 and attracts votes from Barcelona residente who voted both ERC and, to a lesser extent, the People's Party (PP) in the last elections.
In second place in the poll is the PSC candidate, Jaume Collboni, who just this week resigned from his deputy mayoral role in in the coalition municipal government with Colau, in order to dedicate himself to the campaign. The Socialist candidate can expect to win 9 or 10 councillors according to the poll, 1 or 2 more than at present - that is, 2 to 3 behind Trias and 19.26% of the votes, an increase of 0.85 %. Collboni retains 64.4% of Socialist voters from four years ago and is expected to 29.3% of those who recall voting for the Ciudadanos (Cs) list in 2019.
Colau in third position and Maragall fourth
In third place is the current mayor, Ada Colau, with her worst result of the three elections she has contested, and according to the poll results, would lose any options to win a third term as mayor. The BComú leader would obtain 8-9 councillors and 16.68% of the votes, that is to say, she would lose one or two representatives on the city council and 4.06% of the votes obtained in the 2019 elections. In those elections, Colau's party was the second largest force, behind ERC, but she regained the mayoral role thanks to the support of the Socialists and 3 councillors from the xenophobic platform led by former French prime minister Manuel Valls and of which Ciudadanos was a part.
The main victim of the so-called Trias effect would be Ernest Maragall, who, having succeeded in turning ERC into the leading force in the Catalan capital in 2019, would now fall to fourth place with 7-8 councillors - he obtained 10 in the previous municipal elections - and 15.99% of the votes, 5.38% less than four years ago. Thus, according to the Feedback survey, 30% of respondents who remember voting for ERC in the 2019 elections would choose Junts in the elections of May 28th. Maragall would retain 47.7% of ERC voters in 2019 and attract 9.6% of those who opted for Junts as well as 7.4% of those who voted for the PSC four years ago.