The results of a new poll indicate that it’s quite likely that Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum will be sworn in as Mexico’s first female president on Oct. 1, 2024.
A poll conducted by the Reforma newspaper found that Morena is easily the most popular political party in Mexico, and that Sheinbaum is the favored presidential candidate for the party founded by President López Obrador.
Reforma surveyed 1,000 adults earlier this month and published the results of its poll on Friday, just over a year before Mexicans go to the polls to elect a new president and renew both houses of federal Congress.
One question the newspaper put to poll respondents was, “Which party would you vote for if the presidential election was held today?”
Excluding those who didn’t indicate a preference, 49% of respondents nominated Morena, compared to just 20% who opted for the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the second most popular choice.
Combined support for Morena and its allies, the Labor Party (PT) and the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), was 55%, while the Va por México alliance, made up of the PAN, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), was 16 points behind, with 39% of those polled saying they would vote for one of those three parties.
The Va Por México parties announced in January that they would field a common presidential candidate at the June 2, 2024 election, but there is currently little clarity about who that will be.
On the Morena-PT-PVEM side, there are four main contenders for the nomination, and one fringe one – PT Deputy José Gerardo Rodolfo Fernández Noroña.
Almost one-third of poll respondents – 31% – said that Sheinbaum was their preferred Morena candidate, while 26% nominated Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández and Senator Ricardo Monreal attracted support of just 6% and 5%, respectively, while 30% of those polled said they didn’t know who their preferred Morena candidate was.
Sheinbaum, a physicist and engineer who was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, declared late last year that she is ready to take on the nation’s top job.
Thirty-six percent of poll respondents believe that the mayor is López Obrador’s favorite Morena aspirant, compared to just 19% who think AMLO prefers Ebrard. López Hernández is close to the president, and a fellow tabasqueño (Tabasco native), but only 6% of those polled believe he is the president’s número uno choice.
Morena has said it will survey its members to determine who its candidate will be, but less than half of those polled – 49% – indicated that they believed that is the way the party will ultimately decide on its flag bearer. While 13% said they didn’t know how Morena will choose its candidate, a not insignificant 38% expressed the view that López Obrador will have the final say. AMLO himself has asserted that will not be the case.
None of the potential Va por México candidates received double-digit support among those polled by Reforma.
PAN Deputy Santiago Creel, a former interior minister, was the preferred PAN-PRI-PRD candidate of 6% of respondents, while PAN Senator Lilly Téllez, a Morena defector, attracted the same level of support.
Ricardo Anaya, a former deputy and PAN national presented who contested the 2018 election, was favored by 5% of those polled, while PRI Senator Beatriz Paredes was the top choice of the same percentage of respondents.
Almost six in 10 people – 59% – said they didn’t know who their preferred opposition candidate was, a situation that is perhaps reflective of the current lack of clarity about who will actually seek the PAN-PRI-PRD candidacy.
Another opposition party, Citizens Movement (MC), has indicated that it will also field a candidate at next year’s presidential election. Monterrey Mayor Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, son of murdered PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, was the preferred MC candidate of 30% of respondents, while Nuevo León Governor Samuel García and Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro were nominated by 13% and 6% of those polled, respectively.
Half of the 1,000 respondents didn’t cite a preferred candidate for the MC, which backed Anaya in 2018 and López Obrador in 2012.
Reforma also set up nine contests between potential candidates, and asked respondents to cast mock ballots. Sheinbaum easily won the three in which she was included, while Ebrard and López Obrador Hernández also came out on top in the three in which they competed, albeit by narrower margins.
The key takeaway is that Morena appears likely to win the presidency next year, regardless of the candidate the party ends up choosing.
López Obrador, who trounced his opponents at the 2018 election by winning over 53% of the vote, will hand over the presidential sash to his successor four months after next year’s election. Sheinbaum, at this stage, looks to be the most likely recipient.
With reports from Reforma
