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02/06/2006 | Mexico: Of Soccer and Electoral Strategy

Stratfor Staff

Mexico's presidential race has become a very close contest. The latest polls show the conservative National Action Party's candidate Felipe Calderon tied with the Democratic Revolutionary Party's candidate, left-leaning former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador; Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Roberto Madrazo is not far behind.

 

On June 6, the candidates will meet for their second and last televised debate. Whoever wins that will have a good chance of winning the July 2 election.

The final weeks of Mexico's presidential campaign have seen it become a very close race. After several months of leading the competition in virtually every opinion poll, left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) lost that position in May to Felipe Calderon from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN). The latest voter intention surveys indicate that Lopez Obrador and Calderon are tied, with Roberto Madrazo of the formerly long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) not far behind.

As recently as five weeks ago, Lopez Obrador looked like the certain winner. He held a modest but consistent lead in opinion polls, which gave him the initiative to set the campaign and policy agenda. In an attempt to protect his lead, Lopez Obrador decided not to attend the first televised debate, opting to attack Fox instead. After two false starts, Calderon finally found a way to exploit Lopez Obrador's weaknesses and launched an advertising campaign comparing Lopez Obrador to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The campaign proved to be a success. Meanwhile, Madrazo has been trying to plug the holes that widespread scandals and internal discord have made in the PRI's ship.

The candidates' second and last televised debate, slated for June 6, is the most prominent event before the July 2 election The victor is likely to have a definitive advantage when voters go to the polls. Though the race has become more competitive, no candidate has created much excitement among the voters, and a large portion of the electorate will not even bother to vote. Furthermore, the soccer World Cup -- which will be held in Germany from June 9 through July 9 -- is expected to decrease voter attention even more. The three main candidates' electoral strategy is to try to get into first place before the World Cup begins, and the upcoming debate is likely their biggest chance to win over the undecided voters and consolidate their support bases.

Having lost his position as front-runner, Lopez Obrador also lost the impression of inevitability he was trying to bring to the upcoming debate. He has dismissed every poll that does not give him the advantage, maintaining that his own numbers say otherwise. He said in an ad on national television this week that he is focusing on just one segment of the electorate: those who earn less than $800 a month, to whom he proposed giving cash handouts as soon as he becomes president. The problem is that he would be dispensing those handouts to a great majority of the Mexican population, and he has yet to figure out where the money would come from. Lopez Obrador will continue attacking Fox, Calderon and the PAN's role in the bank bailout after the 1994-1995 financial crisis, which he considered a cover-up to protect rich bankers, even though Fox, Calderon and the PAN were not in power at the time. Also, having lost many of the "independent voters" who once sided with him, Lopez Obrador will appeal directly to voters identified with the PRI and try to win over those in the party's left wing to supplement the support from his own PRD.

Calderon, in turn, has had a tough time generating enthusiasm beyond his party base. Despite being the youngest of the candidates, he represents a brand of social conservatism that has not gone over well with the youngest voters. However, he could persuade many voters leaning toward Lopez Obrador that the PRD candidate poses a grave economic risk. Calderon's message that associates Lopez Obrador with Chavez and highlights his willingness to go on a spending spree once in power has played well in the northern states, where Calderon has consolidated a wide margin. However, he seems to have won over all those who can be convinced by that strategy, and he does not yet have sufficient support to win the election.

Madrazo, who has the highest personal negative ratings from voters, has been unable to run a consistent campaign. His run has been marred by scandals and party infighting -- some of which he is responsible for, and most of which was engineered by his opponents within the PRI. The scandals have put the once-invincible PRI on the verge of falling into third place, a position from which it would be hard to recover. Despite all that, the PRI has shown extraordinary resilience, and Madrazo is hoping that low voter turnout will allow him to take advantage of the party machinery's "get out the vote" strategy. Madrazo is also appealing to the segment of the population targeted by Lopez Obrador, saying he will help but without endangering the country's economic well-being. Madrazo also will relentlessly attack Calderon to undermine his support in the north.

Opinion polls after the debate could give a good indication of which candidate was able to win over the small segment of the electorate that is up for grabs. Economic and public security issues will dominate the debate. The candidates are not likely to pay much attention to the most prominent item on the U.S.-Mexican agenda -- immigration -- during the debate or during the rest of the campaign, unless there are incidents along the border involving the U.S. National Guard that result in the deaths of Mexican nationals. Such an event would directly affect Calderon, who would be identified with Fox's acquiescence to the U.S. National Guard deployment to the border.

This presidential election is the first in which Mexico is allowing absentee voting for Mexicans living abroad. This was a long-standing demand from the Mexican community in the United States, which accounts for an overwhelming majority of Mexicans living outside Mexico. Politicians had stalled on the issue for various reasons, but an eleventh-hour attempt in 2005 finally succeeded in allowing absentee voting. Of an estimated 4 million potential voters outside the country, only about 300,000 registered to vote, and even fewer will actually vote. The reasons for this are varied, but one major reason is that Mexicans living abroad whose status is not legal could be afraid of being identified if they send their votes. The number of registered Mexican voters outside Mexico will increase, and then the Mexican community in the United States will become an active constituency. This is likely to change the dynamics between Mexico City and Washington.

Stratfor (Estados Unidos)

 


Otras Notas Relacionadas... ( Records 1 to 10 of 5272 )
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