Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has extended her lead over Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard as the preferred candidate for the ruling Morena party at the 2024 presidential election.
An El Financiero newspaper poll also shows that the alliance of Morena, the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Party (PVEM) has a 20-point lead over the three-party Va por México opposition bloc, made up of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).
Sheinbaum, who declared late last year that she is ready to take on the nation’s top job, was the preferred Morena candidate of 34% of 900 people polled by El Financiero in late April.
Support for the mayor was up three points compared to March, while the percentage of respondents who nominated Ebrard as their preferred candidate declined one point to 18%.
Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández was chosen by 10% of those polled as their preferred candidate for Morena and its allies, while Gerardo Fernández Noroña, a deputy with the PT, and Senator Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the upper house, received 7% and 6% support, respectively.
Almost a quarter of the respondents didn’t nominate a preferred Morena candidate.
Results of El Financiero’s polling show that support for Sheinbaum has steadily increased this year while Ebrard has lost ground every month since January. The publication of the results on Monday comes ahead of the official launch of Morena’s selection process next month.
“The call for applications will be issued in the second half of June,” Morena’s national president, Mario Delgado, said last week. “… Everyone who wants to participate will register. It will be an open process.”
President López Obrador, who founded Morena, reportedly asked the party to select its candidate by August, but Delgado indicated that a “second and definitive survey” to choose a flag bearer won’t be held until September or October. The potential candidates who fare best in a first survey of Morena members in July or August will advance to the second round, the party chief explained.
El Financiero’s latest poll results also show that Sheinbaum has a significant advantage over Ebrard in terms of what people think of them. Just under half of the respondents —49% — said they had a favorable opinion of the Mexico City mayor, while only 35% said the same about the foreign minister. A third of respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Ebrard while just over a quarter said the same about Sheinbaum
A 2021 accident on a Mexico City Metro line that claimed the lives of 26 people is considered an electoral burden for both potential candidates. The line was built while Ebrard was Mexico City mayor between 2006 and 2012, while the accident occurred on Sheinbaum’s watch.
Among potential opposition candidates, PAN Senator Lilly Téllez, who defected from Morena in 2020, is considered the best choice by 15% of respondents to El Financiero’s latest poll, ahead of PRI Senator Claudia Ruiz Massieu (12%).
PRI Senator Beatriz Paredes received 8% support, former PAN national president Ricardo Anaya, who contested the 2018 presidential election, was the preferred candidate of 7% of respondents and former Mexico City mayor and current PRD Senator Miguel Ángel Mancera was endorsed by 6% of those polled.
The Citizens Movement party (MC) has also indicated it will contest next year’s presidential election, but two of its potential candidates are not particularly popular among the electorate, El Financiero found.
Just 14% of poll respondents said they had a favorable opinion of Nuevo León Governor Samuel García, while 39% expressed an unfavorable view and 31% declared they didn’t know him.
Monterrey Mayor Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, son of slain 1994 PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, fared only slightly better, with 19% of those poll expressing a favorable opinion of the potential candidate and 27% expressing an unfavorable one.
El Financiero also asked respondents which party they would vote for if the presidential election was held on the day they were polled. Morena was the clear winner, with 49% opting for the ruling party, ahead of the PAN (19%), the PRI (12%) and MC (7%).
The Morena-PT-PVEM alliance together attracted 54% support, while the PAN-PRI-PRD bloc, which announced in January it would field a common candidate, had combined backing of 34%.
Those figures, as well as the results of previous polls, indicate that Morena will secure a second consecutive six-year term of government at the June 2, 2024 election.
The ruling party will also be seeking to improve its position in Congress, after losing seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and Senate at elections in 2021.
With reports from El Financiero and La Jornada
