The President of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), Jose Felix Tezanosdeclared himself this Wednesday “victim” of a “lynching” by the representatives of the PP. In addition, he attacked the press and admitted to having inflated the data of the left in the polls of the institution he directs.
“You are carrying out systematic persecution, you are practicing systematic and constant lynching,” Tezanos lamented before the Constitutional Commission of the Congress, where he is responsible for the “manifest partisan bias” that the PP denounces and that exists with regard to the CEI. Something that popular They denounce that this has an “impact on the radical discredit achieved by the organization.”
“I believe that discredit does not reach public opinion,” said the sociologist with extensive experience in the PSOE. “I don’t know if it would be a bit absurd for the CEI to conduct a survey on itself to ask public opinion if it is discredited,” Tezanos quipped. “Why do they appear in the media? ‘Why are you so excited?'” added the president of the CEI in the Lower House.
Tezanos admitted that “it is true that in the CEI surveys there is usually a tendency to estimate more the vote of Sumar and the left in general.” “There are more voting intentions,” said the former senior socialist official, “than what finally reaches the polls.”
“I think it has a lot to do with the power of a certain media apparatus that obviously supports you and tries to dissuade this progressive electorate from going to the polls,” reflected the president of the CEI, directly designating the press.
“This is called manipulation.”
The PP criticized Tezanos for the “bias” of its polls. The deputy popular and second vice-president of the Congress, Jose Antonio Bermudez de Castrodemanded the resignation of the president of the CEI. “His own colleagues tell him that his management cannot be more sectarian or more harmful to science, which is why he should not continue to lead the CEI,” Bermúdez de Castro reproached him.
Furthermore, the PP representative stressed the idea that the bias in favour of the left is not “a mistake” but “a decision called manipulation”. “They say that Spain is left-wing, but it is not like that, what is left-wing are its polls”, said the deputy. popular.
The Tezanos bias
Tezanos began his term as president of the Centre for Sociological Research in 2018. The sociologist from Santander has been affiliated with the PSOE since 1973. Between the 80s and 90s, he held different positions within the socialist formation. Before his arrival at the CEI, he was secretary of studies and programs of the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez.
Experts agree that there is a favorable trend towards the left after the last elections. Of the 42 elections that have taken place since Tezanos chaired the CEI, 41 of them have produced a better result than the one he finally obtained at the polls. So much so that in some of them, the result of the sum of the left-wing parties was four points lower than what the public body estimated.
The last failure of the CEI was the European elections. On the last day that the surveys could be published, the Centre for Sociological Research named the PSOE as the leading force in the Spanish delegation to the European Parliament, while it was the PP that obtained the most votes and therefore the most seats, when it comes to single-district elections. The CIS was wrong in all the brackets it gave the parties.
