Game on, México!

 Wow. Oh wow. Big news in the Mexican presidential race.

Courtesy of Ganchoblog, it seems that the Mexican presidential blowout that we all expected for Enrique Peña Nieto may not actually happen. The Reforma newspaper runs reputable polls, and they show a sudden collapse in PRI presidential support from 42% to 38%, with AMLO rising from 27% to 34%. Now, I remember drinking pulque (horrible stuff, by the way) with some friends in Melchor Ocampo (awful town, I should add, although worth visiting) and being told that the polls meant nothing, AMLO could pull it out. I scoffed. Distant relatives in Huixquilucan (a very much not-awful town, at least if you like bad science fiction movies from the 1970s, but really not worth visiting unless you know somebody who lives there) said the same. But they were PRD partisans, and so I scoffed some more.

But they were all correct! If this poll holds, then the electoral game is on. We will have a real race on our hands, and not a PRI blowout. Both Melchor Ocampo and Huixquilucan are in Mexico State and under the Peña governorship. I think that gave my friends tacit knowledge about the fragility of his support that nerdy old gringo me could not appreciate. I think Mr. Hootsen, who also lives in Mexico State, would concur.

Were I voting in the election, a poll like this would pose a dilemma. I despise AMLO for his actions after the 2006 election. But I suspect, for reasons I find distressingly hard to verbalize, that he would be less damaging to Mexico than a President Peña. Which means that strategically speaking, if AMLO had a chance, I would want to cast a strategic vote for him. Except ... his behavior and statements in 2006. The questions raised by the commentators here are becoming much more valid. Assuming that the poll holds and we really do have a race, for whom should a concerned Mexican citizen vote?

I would like to end with a call for someone to start a blog like Fivethirtyeight, aimed at the Mexican elections. So far, the Reforma poll is an outlier. We have no way of judging its accuracy or predicting the result. Mexico could use a Fivethirtyeight. I nominate Diego Valle to start it.

Comments

[Diego]

Heh, ADN Político has a poll of polls

[Amma]

Let's see what happens!

[Jan-Albert Hootsen]

I concur :-) However, I actually believe that it´s not even so much Peña Nieto support dropping significantly, if not undecided voters starting to make up their minds and opting for AMLO, possibly encouraged by the recent anti-EPN protests.

A few weeks back Reforma stated some 32% of voters were still undecided, which is obviously a significant chunk of the electorate. A large share of those swing voters may have been scared off by AMLO because of his 2006 antics, but didn´t want to vote for EPN either. AMLO´s campaign is fairly moderate and solid, whereas JVM´s and EPN´s campaigns are dented by now. Perhaps the Ibero-incident ad the subsequent ´Yo soy #132´-protests have pushed some of them into AMLO´s direction.

Here in Edomex EPN´s rallies were attended by large groups of people who turned out to have no idea who he was or even what they were doing there. Apparently they had been paid by the local diputado (often just with a bag of groceries) to attend the meeting, and obviously late on vote for him. More than any other part the PRI still uses those kinds of tactics to buy votes, and in the states controlled by the party that will definitely happen on election day.

What I mean to say by this is that the PRI´s support is fragile, but only on the periphery of PAN-weary voters. In absolute terms EPN won´t lose many votes, but in relative terms he is: AMLO is still gaining, because the very large undecided segment is now swinging towards him. That should make quite a few people in the PRI nervous.

At least that´s my theory!