This Sunday June 2 More than 99.5 million Mexicans have an appointment with the polls in the largest elections in their historywith more than 20,000 positions at stake and with the official candidate Claudia Sheinbaum as the clear favorite to win the Presidencyall of this in the midst of a campaign also marked by violence, in which around thirty candidates have been murdered.
The campaign started on March 1 and from that moment There has been no survey that questioned Sheinbaum’s victoryWhich is situated around 50% voting intentionahead of the opposition candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, who has been deflating over time until she is about 20 percentage points behind the Morena candidate.
The ‘dolphin’ of President Andrés Manuel López Obradorformer mayor of the capital, has promised that she will continue with the political legacy with which she has achieved her high popularity and approval ratings, as well as with her proposal to combat violence, which distances herself from the punitive measures of previous governments in favor of actions more focused on tackling poverty and inequality.
Although in recent weeks has reduced the margin with her opposition competitor, it continues to be more than wide according to most of the polls, although not insurmountable. Gálvez hopes to achieve the hidden vote of millions of Mexicans, as well as those of the third in the running, a testimonial Álvarez Máynez.
Gálvez is the bet of an opposition that, if the polls are successful, will will prove incapable of reversing López Obrador’s popularity thanks to its social policies in large areas of the country, relegated to oblivion by formations such as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), with 70 years of government.
Despite the media and institutional support given to him by the acronym that makes up the ‘Strength and Heart for Mexico’ coalition -PRI, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)-, Gálvez has not even been able to place himself at the forefront of the preferences of the residents of his Tepatepec. natal, an agricultural town in the center of the state of Hidalgo.
These three Months of campaign have also been marked by the murder of thirty candidatesthe last of them this week in Coyuca, in Guerrero, as well as the unfortunate episode during a Máynez event in Nuevo León, where the Collapse of a stage caused the death of nine people.
Violence has been caused mainly by the proposals in localities and small towns, where the State presence continues to be diffuse due to the power they maintain systemically organized crime and cartels.
The Organization of American States (OAS), which has condemned the recent episodes of violence and murders during the campaign, trusts that “citizen participation and mobilization will overcome fear.” The organization is already in the country with an electoral observation mission.
Despite the figures, President López Obrador has highlighted that the Violence rates are lower compared to previous years and he has criticized the, in his opinion, “sensationalism” that some media outlets have been making of this matter for, he said, electoral and “politician” purposes.
The government announced this week that More than 27,000 Army and National Guard troops will be deployed to guarantee the security of the almost 100 million votersout of a population of about 129 million people.
In addition to the dispute – just one round away – for the Presidency of the country, the almost 100 million Mexicans who They are called to the polls and also have the designs of the new Congress on their ballot.made up of almost 630 seats between the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, as well as almost 20,000 other positions.
Among them are those of the headquarters of Mexico City and its 16 mayoralties, as well as the governments of the states of ChiapasMorelos, Tabasco, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Puebla, Veracruz and Yucatán, and their respective local entities.
The official coalition ‘Let’s Keep Making History’ – formed by Morena, the Labor Party (PT) and the environmentalists (PVEM) – in turn aspires to expand the majority it has in Congress, as well as defend its main bastion, Mexico Citywhere until now Claudia Sheinbaum served as head of Government.
This Sunday’s elections are framed within a quite exceptional period in the recent history of Mexico, since For the first time in its history, everything suggests that a woman will be chosen to direct the life project of Mexicans. for the next six years.
The winner will have the challenge of promote equality in a country where two femicides are recorded a daywhich means that, for decades, more than 3,000 women and girls have been murdered for being women.
