A new poll shows that President López Obrador’s approval rating is holding steady and strong at 66%.
For the third month in a row, the president has found support among two-thirds of respondents to the monthly survey conducted by the newspaper El Financiero.
The percentage of respondents who disapproved of López Obrador’s performance was unchanged between May and July at 32%.
Although the president’s approval rating remains strong, it is 20 points short of the 86% support he garnered in the newspaper’s February poll, which came after the government’s crackdown on fuel theft.
And it is just below the 70% approval rating López Obrador attracted in a poll carried out by the newspaper Reforma last month.
The 66% rating is one point better than that achieved by former National Action Party presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón at the end of the second quarter of their first year in office.
Ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto had a 52% approval rating at the end of July 2013.
In terms of personal qualities, López Obrador scored best for honesty and leadership. Almost six in 10 respondents said that his performance in the former area was very good or good, while 53% said the same about the latter.
Less flattering for the president is that only 47% of respondents said that they mostly or somewhat believe what he says whereas 51% said that they have very limited or no faith in the veracity of López Obrador’s statements.
Despite the strong overall rating for the president, his government’s approach to dealing with key issues failed to impress most poll respondents.
The López Obrador administration fared best on education, with 35% of those polled saying that the government is doing well in the area.
However, 38% said that the government is doing badly on education issues, while 25% said that the performance was neither good nor bad.
The percentage of respondents who said that the government is doing badly exceeded those who said that the government is doing well on all other issues probed by El Financiero.
One-third of respondents said the government is dealing with public security issues well but 42% said that its performance was bad.
Homicide statistics for the first half of 2019 show that Mexico is on track to record its most violent year ever.
One-third of respondents also said the government’s response to welfare issues was good but 44% said otherwise
The positive/negative assessments of the government’s performance were 28% and 51% respectively for healthcare, 27% and 41% for infrastructure projects and 23% and 51% for the economy.
Hospitals have been plagued by shortages of medications and personnel this year, none of the government’s signature infrastructure projects – the Santa Lucía airport, the Dos Bocas refinery and the Maya Train – have made much progress and the economy only narrowly avoided entering a technical recession by recording 0.1% growth in the second quarter of the year.
Just over half of respondents said that economic growth was more important than the distribution of wealth while 43% said the opposite.
President López Obrador has stressed recently that his government is not aiming for growth for growth’s sake but rather to be in a position to distribute wealth more equitably.
Despite the government putting the fight against corruption at the center of its agenda, only 21% of respondents said that its approach to dealing with the problem was good compared to 62% who said it was bad.
Just one in six poll respondents said the government is responding well to combating poverty whereas almost six in 10 said it is doing badly.
More than seven in 10 said they disagreed with the government’s plan to deliver economic aid to Central American countries while just 27% said they supported it.
The government performed better with regard to the “decisions and actions” it has taken.
Six in 10 respondents said they had a favorable view of the creation and deployment of the National Guard while just 25% said that they had an unfavorable view of the new force.
More than half of respondents supported López Obrador’s daily news conferences while only a quarter were opposed, while similar percentages of people indicated that they were in favor and opposed, respectively, to the government’s implementation of austerity measures.
More than six in 10 respondents said they would vote for López Obrador to continue as president in a revocation of mandate vote, which López Obrador has pledged to hold three years into his six-year term, but 70% said that they were opposed to him being reelected as president, for which an amendment to the constitution would be required.
Asked whether Mexico was on a good or bad path under his leadership, 49% of respondents said the former and 45% the latter.
El Financiero conducted its poll nationally with 820 adults during two three-day periods in July. The newspaper said the survey has a margin of error of +/-3.4%.
Source: El Financiero (sp)
