May 31, 2024
This Sunday, June 2, more than 98 million Mexicans are called to the polls to elect who will succeed Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as President of the country. The national election will also define 128 senatorial positions and the 500 federal deputies that make up the entire Lower House. Likewise, 8 governorates and the strategic administration of the capital, Mexico City, are defined.
This year, the 12 million Mexicans residing abroad will be able to vote through three different modalities: postal, electronic and in-person voting. For the latter, the voting points will be located in 23 consulates (20 of them located in the United States).
In Mexico, voting is not mandatory, and in the last elections participation has been around 65%.
Three candidates are competing for the Presidency, with two women standing out in the race, a milestone in Mexican political history.
The official candidate – who responds to President López Obrador and the continuity of the process known as Fourth Transformation (4T) – is Claudia Sheinbaum, who was head of Government of Mexico City until she entered the race. Sheinbaum is linked to the scientific and academic world, and she maintained high popularity rates throughout her time as head of the capital city, standing out for her achievements in transportation and social justice.
• Sheimbaum is the candidate of the Let’s Keep Making History coalition, made up of Morena, the Labor Party and the Green Party. It should be noted that in Mexico the electoral system favors coalitions, in which different parties – with their own candidacies in Congress and Senate – appear, however, in the presidential election and in different constituencies in a coalition.
On the opposition side, the strongest candidacy is that of Xóchitl Gálvez. Gálvez is a PAN senator who presents herself as ‘independent’. The businesswoman, originally from Hidalgo, is running as a representative for the right-wing coalition Fuerza y Corazón por México, which unifies parties that have historically been bitter rivals: the PAN, the PRI and the PRD.
o These three formations came together with the sole objective of defeating the 4T project. Despite the initial boost that Gálvez’s campaign had, supported by a good part of the strong Mexican media business establishment, extensive financing and an unprecedented unitary agreement of the opposition, the truth is that the absolute majority of polls place her second at a distance. considerable Sheinbaum.
The third candidate in the race is Jorge Álvarez Maynes, a 38-year-old national deputy and representative of the Citizen Movement. This political formation presents itself as a non-traditional, centrist party, politically social democratic and with citizen rhetoric, but with a neoliberal proposal in economic matters. It seeks to capitalize on discontent with the two majority coalitions and has the support of the governors of two important states: Nueva León and Jalisco.
• Despite strong media pressure for Maynes to renounce his candidacy, he has not done so and has maintained a strong speech pointing out the PAN and the PRI. In the latest polls, a strengthening of his candidacy has been seen, although it will be difficult for him to have enough time for the trend to consolidate and for him to be placed in second place.
The latest data – from the month of May – added to the monitoring of surveys carried out by CELAG confirm the trend expressed in all the polls, which indicate a comfortable victory for Claudia Sheinbaum by a margin of no less than 15 points difference over her immediate competitor.
One of the most contested positions in this electoral process will be that of the Government of the country’s capital, the Head of Government of Mexico City. The coalition headed by Morena presents Clara Brugada for this position, to date successful mayor of Iztapalapa, one of the most populous and depressed municipalities that make up Mexico City and in which her management has been extraordinarily recognized and valued.
• Brugada faces the PAN member Santiago Taboada Cortina, for the PAN-PRI-PRD coalition and to date mayor of the Benito Juárez residential municipality of the capital. Taboada has been affected by the well-known corruption case of the “Real Estate Cartel”, which has hampered his candidacy.
• Salomón Chertorivski, Secretary of Health of the Government of former President Felipe Calderón, candidate for the Citizen Movement. Although the polls indicate great parity between the first two candidates, the majority places Brugada slightly in front of the preferences.
Finally, it is worth noting that image surveys place Andrés Manuel López Obrador as one of the presidents with the best positive image at the time of leaving office in the world. The approval of the Tabasco native ranges between 60 and 65 points, after a successful six-year term in charge of the Executive.
In an election that a priori seems to endorse Morena’s national leadership, the participation factor will be decisive because it will determine the formation of the legislative chambers and the possibility of advancing fundamental transformations. To date, the opposition has used its blocking minority to obstruct López Obrador’s main constitutional reforms – in energy matters, democratic regeneration, republican austerity, among others. In this sense, Morena aspires to achieve two-thirds of Congress, a qualified majority that would allow it to implement the reforms.
For his part, AMLO announced that once the electoral process is over he will withdraw from public life and politics to return to his home state.
