Get personal or stay silent - which tactics will win the election?

There was some electoral campaigning over the weekend, but with a little more than two months before the country decides on the next government, there is little sense of the urgency found in the run-up to previous general elections. In part this is because the two main parties have been working together closely over the last month to push a Constitutional amendment through Congress to allow a deficit cap to be written into the Magna Carta.

The Popular Party (PP) has spent 26 of the 34 years of its existence in opposition. It knows about defeat. But for the first time in its history, victory is so clearly within grasp that it almost seems unfair to continue punishing its opponent. The PP leadership understands what Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the Socialist Party's candidate for prime minister, is going through - he enjoys good relations with many of them - and knows that he has little to work with in the upcoming campaign. They know the economic crisis is not going away any time soon.

As for the Socialist Party, it knows that the crisis has robbed it of any chance of a win. Even those who remember 1996, when it was kicked out of office after 14 years owing to a series of scandals and a widespread sense among the public that the party and its leader, Felipe González, had lost touch with reality, say that this time, things are much worse.

In 1996, the country was emerging from an economic crisis that followed the excesses of 1992; this time around, there is no end in sight, despite the government having introduced a series of very unpopular measures. Rubalcaba has been unable to prevent unemployment hitting 20 percent and staying there. That represents five million registered unemployed - not that the Socialist candidate needs reminding: Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy barely lets a day go by without mentioning it. But Rubalcaba shouldn't be written off yet. He is rated higher than Rajoy in the opinion polls, and has worked hard to come up with new ideas and a new approach to government that will give the PP a run for its money in the race toward November 20.

The Socialists know that Rubalcaba is the party's only hope. And that is what they will base their strategy on. Both the Socialists and the Popular Party say in private that their respective strategies are clear. The Socialists will make it personal: inviting voters to decide between the two leaders, based on Rubalcaba's higher rating in the opinion polls and voters' evaluation of his sense of responsibility, intelligence, discipline, management skills, capacity for hard work and negotiating abilities.

The Popular Party will try to make voters see the elections in terms of two brands: theirs and the Socialists. Even the Socialist Party admits that its marque has lost some of its shine. That said, it will be reminding people of the role it played in creating a welfare state, in consolidating democracy, and that it has been prepared to make decisions for the good of the country that have gone against its own electoral interests; what's more, Rubalcaba has played a key part in all of this.

So far, Rajoy has done everything possible to avoid a one-to-one debate with Rubalcaba; he even avoids mentioning him by name. And he will continue to duck a head-on confrontation with his opponent. What's more, the recent pact to amend the Constitution has served Rajoy well. Rubalcaba had hit the ground running following the announcement of early elections last month and was stealing the limelight with his idea to reduce the tiers of regional government; then came the proposal to include a Constitutional commitment to cap the deficit, which saw Rajoy assume the man-of-state role in his talks with Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

The Socialist Party admits that the pact has knocked its electoral campaign off kilter, but says there is a positive side. It insists that despite the initial blow, Rubalcaba has proved that he is the real force in the party now. It was his persuasive skills and his position in the party that allowed him to sell the pact to the Socialists, many of whom were deeply reticent about it. The pact was a baptism of fire, but Rubalcaba has emerged stronger from it: so sure is he of his leadership that last week he criticized Zapatero's management of the issue, saying: "I would have handled it differently."

The two candidates do have some things in common. They have both spent their careers playing second fiddle. This is Rubalcaba's first bid for power. Rajoy has tried twice before, and failed. He has always been overshadowed by Aznar, both in the party and in government. Unusually, neither of the men have ever held a top job; they have never been mayor or head of a regional government.

Rajoy knows that he cannot avoid Rubalcaba indefinitely, and that before the election he will have to face him on television. The Socialist Party will be betting the farm on Rubalcaba's performance; the Popular Party has reluctantly accepted because Rubalcaba has insisted on it so often that to back out would be seen as weakness. In 2004, Rajoy refused a televised debate with Zapatero, and has since recognized it as a strategic error. Among the PP, the hope is that both candidates are so familiar to Spaniards that a couple of debates are unlikely to have much impact on voter intention.

Rubalcaba himself is said to be doubtful that he can change people's minds by beating Rajoy in a debate. But his team is insisting it will be the highlight of the campaign, and that it offers the best format to exploit its only advantage over the opposition.

The mood in the Popular Party's headquarters in Madrid is one of quiet confidence. "Rubalcaba might win the campaign, but he will lose in the polling stations," says one veteran. The PP doesn't like campaigning, and believes that the Socialists do it better. But Rajoy's strategy in the May municipal elections, which produced a landslide for the PP, was to avoid discussing anything, and this has boosted confidence among the party's organizers. The road to victory is assured, as long as Rajoy avoids talking, seems to be the general idea.

Rubalcaba believes he has more to offer than the image of a safe pair of hands, and that his program will do more to help this country emerge from the crisis than the PP's - if anybody knew what it was. Which is why he is so keen to explain his ideas. Rubalcaba also has a few tricks up his sleeve, such as putting forward female candidates throughout the country. He will also be working to get the entire party behind him. The Socialist Party has such faith in Rubalcaba that, for the first time, the campaign will be adapted to fit the candidate, not the other way round, as usually happens. There will be few of the stage-managed rallies that characterize elections: Rubalcaba says that the last thing people want to see when they sit down over dinner to watch the news is some guy rattling on about politics surrounded by his cheering supporters.

Rubalcaba has never been one for speechifying, and says that it makes even less sense at a time of crisis. Instead he is taking a radically new approach in organizing a series of events open to all, at which he will outline his ideas. He will be focusing on four main areas: employment, cutbacks, social policy, and most interestingly, taxes. Rubalcaba knows that the PP has committed itself to not raising taxes, unlike most of its conservative allies throughout Europe. He also knows that the public will get behind him if he proposes taxing the rich. Rubalcaba is proposing three types of taxes to garner money for social spending: a new tax on the super rich; another to be slapped on the banks; and another, green tax, on companies that pollute.

The Popular Party has traditionally relied on big, stage-managed rallies filled with the party faithful waving flags and cheering on their leader. Rajoy is known to dislike taking questions from journalists and the public, but will follow his opponent's approach of smaller-scale events to explain his ideas. He has already organized four smaller conventions and a national one in Málaga. The Socialists will also be organizing conventions open to all.

The PP is so convinced that Rajoy is going to win that it has come to believe that it cannot make any mistakes. All it has to do is avoid falling into any traps that the Socialist Party might lay. And one of those potential pitfalls is the debate that Rubalcaba is trying to get going about how the crisis is affecting the poor and not the rich. The PP's approach has been to simply point out that it was the Socialist Party that ended the wealth tax, and leave it at that.

The PP's campaign will focus on unemployment. Despite the public's disdain for Aznar, and the efforts Rajoy has made to distance himself from his former mentor, the Popular Party will be casting people's minds back to 1996. The party believes that the public sees the PP as better managers than the Socialists. The economy had in fact begun to improve by the time the PP took over in 1996, but it still inherited 22 percent unemployment and a 7 percent deficit.

But in private, Rajoy and the rest of the Popular Party knows that the current crisis is far more serious than it was 15 years ago. In part, this explains why the electoral campaign has been slow to start. The Constitutional pact has been at the center of things because the crisis is the only thing anybody is thinking about.

It's the same story in the Socialist Party. Rubalcaba and Zapatero spent their time at the party's last executive meeting explaining to their colleagues how difficult things are. In fact Rubalcaba intends to highlight what he sees as Rajoy's inability to react, as well as his putting his party's needs before those of the country's, as opposed to the way that the Socialist Party has tackled the problems facing the country head on, while taking many unpopular decisions.

The long and the short of it is that the PP's almost assured victory might turn out to be a poisoned chalice. Rajoy and Zapatero have talked long and hard this summer, and Rajoy has made clear his concerns to the party. "The crisis and the financial storm prevent us from seeing anything else," says one senior figure in the PP. At last week's strategy meeting, the party's leadership spent much more time analyzing data that suggests the economy could take a further dive in the autumn than it did on deciding long-term strategy.

The situation is changing every day, which might explain why for the moment, neither party has begun a billboard campaign. Zapatero may still have to take other drastic measures before November. He is obsessed with preventing the need for an IMF/EU intervention, convinced that this would see major cuts in social spending, as has happened in Portugal, Greece, and Ireland.

Rajoy, according to those who know him well, is convinced victory is his, but is worried about what he is going to do on November 21. If the crisis has managed to crush Zapataro's popularity, it can destroy Rajoy's as well, say many, pointing to the situation in the rest of Europe where the electorate is showing scant patience with its governments.

Rajoy's defenders say the reason he has yet to lay out his position on how to deal with Spain's deficit is because the situation is changing so quickly that the PP doesn't know what it will do, and more to the point what it will find itself having to deal with.

But Rajoy has made it clear that he will not be repeating British Prime Minister David Cameron's mistake. When asked to be more explicit and clarify his position, and to call on the electorate for a mandate to cut spending, the PP leader reminds them that this is exactly what Cameron did when he was riding high in the polls; he nearly lost the election.

Rajoy prefers the approach taken by Portugal's new prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, who won his country's June elections by promising not to cut spending or raise taxes, but has now begun to do so. The PP is working on the basis that it will have an implicit mandate to continue cutting spending, and if necessary, raise taxes. Proof is that María Dolores de Cospedal, the party's secretary-general, has been able to announce cuts of 20 percent since taking over as the head of the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha. The PP-controlled Madrid regional government has also begun announcing spending cuts that will affect education and health services.

This is precisely where Rubalcaba believes he can reach out to the electorate by explaining to voters that while his party accepts the need for austerity, it is committed to protecting health and education, and that the tax hikes he is proposing are a means to share the burden of the crisis among those who can afford to pay. The PP is still sticking to its story that there will be no tax hikes under its rule. "More taxes means more unemployment, let's stop this demagoguery about the rich paying or the poor paying," said Cospedal on Monday.

But Rajoy has made it clear that he will continue with the labor market reforms introduced under the Socialist Party that make it easier for businesses to hire and fire workers. He's not about to spell out the measures he intends to take, for fear of spreading alarm, but he has already pointed to some of his plans in his biography, En Confianza (or, In confidence) - for example, he will be further reducing the role of the labor unions by passing legislation that will bring an end to collective bargaining. The book is part of the campaign to improve Rajoy's poor image by showing his supposedly more human side. The idea is simple: there is no reason to fear a Rajoy government.

The Popular Party is assuming that it will win an overall majority, if not a landslide, repeating the success it enjoyed in the municipal and regional elections in May. The party has been given an initial advantage in the form of the 15-M movement, which has split the left, garnering support for its protests against the change to the Constitution to include a deficit cap commitment; a move that it says should have been put to a referendum. The PP can count on the right and the center right, but what is still unclear is how many Socialist Party voters will switch loyalty or just not vote at all. But now it seems that the 15-M movement could prompt a collapse in support for the Socialists, something that the PP would rather avoid.

With the PP now controlling the regions, and soon set to take over power at central government, opposition to its policies would no longer be channeled through the Socialists in Congress. Instead, it would take place on the streets. Rajoy has already accepted that he will face at least one general strike in protest at the labor reforms he intends to drive through, but protests such as those that have taken place in Greece would be another matter altogether.

Things have gone so badly for the Socialist Party that many in the PP ask why Zapatero has held on for so long, and only brought elections forward by four months. In the Socialist Party the feeling is that now that it has a strong candidate able to put forward clearly defined proposals and measures, it will win back support, at least among its traditional voters, who largely abandoned the party in the municipal and regional elections. The Socialists know that they have lost ground to the 15-M movement. But the party also knows that there are a lot of people out there who identify with the movement and its demands, and also understand that the best hope, for the moment, of meeting some of them, is through the Socialist Party. The Socialists tipped a wink at 15-M supporters last week after party leaders met with Stéphane Hessel, the author of Get Angry , the book that has inspired many in the 15-M movement.

The next two months will see the Socialists push for a debate on the two main parties' proposals. The election is Rajoy's to lose. He will have to box clever if he is to avoid bring brought out into the open by Rubalcaba.