More than 98 million voters are called to the polls this Sunday in Mexico to decide whether to continue current policies or change registration. The first option is represented by Claudia Sheinbaum, 61 years old, successor to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, favorite in all polls with a clear advantage to become the first woman to occupy the presidential seat not only in Mexico, but in all of North America. The second, ideologies to confront Morena’s push, and the polls insist that they are not even going to achieve it. For those who do not like any of the large blocks, there is a third way, with few possibilities, the Citizen Movement, which has refused to join the opposition and will try to conquer the young vote on its own, with special emphasis on childhood. In recent days, legislating in favor of marijuana consumption and abortion have become its hallmarks, although both practices have already been decriminalized by the Supreme Court.
In this six-year term, Mexico has managed to reduce poverty, which still affects 36% of a population of 126 million inhabitants in a moderate or extreme way. Its crime data, however, has not managed to decrease enough to open room for hope: more than 30,000 deaths per year. The elections are a good example of this, with around thirty candidates murdered since last June, when the campaigns informally began. Poverty and violence have been the two keys to the campaign that began on March 1.
The opposition has harshly attacked the levels of insecurity, its motto has been For a Mexico without fear. However, when it comes to poverty, they have tried to convince the electorate that they would not eliminate the many aids that President López Obrador has distributed to humble families: 70% of Mexican households have some of these, since be they school scholarships, pensions or others. Gálvez, who grew up in a poor town, has repeated ad nauseam that she will support them if she becomes president, because she knows the life of lack, she says, although she is now an engineer and businesswoman.
The favorite, Sheinbaum, does have the majority support of the poor, of that kind of left that embodies her party, Morena, in whose founding she herself participated. It is the movement that brought López Obrador to the presidency with a shower of votes and that keeps him on a political pedestal worthy of a secular saint. His popularity reaches, in the sixth and last year of his mandate, around 60%. That force is what has carried the candidate, who has actively and passively promised to “guard her legacy,” now that he will retire to the ranch when he hands over, on October 1, the presidential sash. The continuity that Sheinbaum has offered guarantees him a huge base of votes, but there are those who fear that the numerous adversaries that the president has gained during his mandate will reduce support in other sectors that in principle would seem typical of this middle-class candidate. , scientific training (she has a doctorate in Physics) and academic career, both in student activism and as a teacher in the classroom.
Part of the middle classes turned against López Obrador for his continuous attacks, including scientists, journalists, intellectuals, feminists, everyone was adding to the list of adversaries. So the president’s maxim: “For the good of all, first the poor” works for Sheinbaum in his success, but he remains to see how much ground he scratches in other spheres. There are those who trust that, if he becomes president, he will improve or vary some of the policies about which he is now silent, and there are no shortage of those who think that he will get even more votes than his predecessor. In a few hours he will see each other.
With improvements or without them, it depends on who looks at it, Mexico still has great pending issues in basic areas, such as education, which this mandate has undergone a major reform that is just beginning in the classrooms with total uncertainty; in health, where the public system shows multiple shortages of human resources, or shortages of vital medicines. It is the economy, one of the areas of greatest citizen interest, that has provided the most joy to the Government and the greatest electoral ammunition to its successor, who has exhibited achievements such as the historic increase in the minimum wage and pensions, records in foreign investment, in exports or in the remittances that migrants send to support entire towns; the strength of the currency, almost unparalleled among peer countries, or the hope of greater jobs associated with the relocation of American companies. As has happened with social aid, not even the opposition has dared to denigrate these advances in the campaign.
These elections, the largest in history, will also decide the new composition of the two Chambers, the governorship of nine States, including the capital, which is administered with identical autonomy, several state legislatures and the mayors of the entire country, in total , more than 20,000 political officials will go through the ballot boxes, wherever they are not burned or stolen, which also happens, punctually. 98 international observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) and other teams at the request of the parties will review the process in a country with a solid democracy, but that maintains some red dots on the map due to criminal violence and other resistance to the elections. . Voting controlled by local bosses or deceptive unions that provide thousands of votes from certain labor sectors to certain candidates, who brazenly acknowledge it, is also common. It is the carried vote.
One of the great unknowns of this election has to do with the PRI. The party that has defined Mexico for decades has been experiencing moribund setbacks for years and is the one that accumulates the greatest citizen rejection in the polls. State by State, it has been losing its territorial strength and many of its senior leaders have abandoned it or been expelled in recent times. The PRI is bleeding and everything predicts that these elections will place it on an irrelevant level in the political future, but the dead man who has killed so many, does not completely lose his health. His bad reputation has been, of course, one of the opposition candidate’s burdens in this campaign.
The second surprise could come from Mexico City. Governed for 27 years by the left, this time the conservatives are hot on its heels, as they already demonstrated in the 2021 midterm elections, when the PAN increased the number of capital mayors until it gained the majority. This result does not have to be repeated, these elections are more complex and the drag of the presidential vote plays in favor of the party that triumphs. If Sheinbaum wins, it is likely that part of her success will also be reflected in Mexico City, but in Morena they have not stopped showing signs of concern with the future of the capital.
The elections will not be the end of the mandate. López Obrador has promised to exhaust the legislature by nothing less than sending to the Chambers a package of measures that require the reform of the Constitution. To do this, he needs these elections to yield a two-thirds majority, which seems complicated and there will only be the month of September to legislate. The new government, established on October 1, must take charge of everything that has been left pending, improve it, modify it or destroy it, depending on who wins. And that is exactly what Mexicans will decide in a few hours.
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