Agustí Benedito, who lost the 2010 election to Sandro Rosell, has taken it upon himself to take the pulse of Barça’s socios (members). Using a survey circulated on the day of FC Barcelona – Celta Vigo on November 1st, we now have a picture of what the 2016 elections may look like. It’s been exclusively translated by totalBarça after the jump.
The main takeaway is that if Joan Laporta runs in 2016, he’s almost certain to win. Though it’s unclear from the origin source what these averages are, members declared that Laporta was their candidate of choice with a ranking of 5.87, ahead of Benedito himself (5.45) and nearly an entire point ahead of Josep Maria Bartomeu’s 4.9 rating. Translated into more understandable figures, if an election were being held the day of the survey 33.8% would vote for Laporta, 23.9% Benedito and just 17.9% the current president. It’s no surprise Bartomeu ranks the lowest as he will for better or worse, fair or not, be forever tainted by Rosell’s troubled tenure. Of those surveyed, 80% expressed dissatisfaction for the overall management of the club. However, I’d chime in at this point and say it was only a year ago that more than 70% of members voted in favor of the Camp Nou project, the perfect opportunity to express a lack of trust and belief in the current directive’s leadership. So perhaps there has been a large shift or perhaps the sample size of this survey makes it unrepresentative.
The survey also presented the possibility of duels, which curiously created a slightly different picture as above. If Laporta took on Bartomeu, he’d win by more than 15% (46.6% versus 31%), so no shock there. However, if Benedito would take on Laporta, he would defeat the former president by about 4%2. Less surprisingly, Benedito would defeat Bartomeu and by a whopping margin of 43.9% to 32%. Laporta would also beat Bartomeu and by an even greater margin of 46.6% to 31%. In all cases, the remainder answered they’d abstain.
Lastly, which is something that has been discussed much on social media and on this very website, 76% who took the survey believe elections should be called early, in the summer of 2015. This is a futile scenario to keep banging on about, the current board have made it crystal clear they are not going to do so.