Six months after she took office as Mexico’s first female leader, President Claudia Sheinbaum’s approval rating remains very high at over 80%, according to the results of a recent poll, but less than one-third of respondents believe she is doing a good job combating corruption and organized crime.
The poll conducted in March by the newspaper El Financiero detected an 83% approval rating for Sheinbaum, down two points compared to the 85% result in February.
#EncuestaEF Aprobación a la Presidenta @Claudiashein registra 83% en marzo. El manejo del caso Teuchitlán divide opiniones.
Aquí la encuesta completa @ElFinanciero_Mx: https://t.co/FupDcKCRKt pic.twitter.com/k3xc5IxH29
— Alejandro Moreno (@almorenoal) April 1, 2025
Fifteen percent of those polled said they disapproved of Sheinbaum’s performance as president while the remaining 2% didn’t respond.
The approval rating in March is the second highest detected by El Financiero since the president was sworn in on Oct. 1. The newspaper noted that the two-point decline in March is within the poll’s margin of error range (+/-3.3 percentage points).
A separate poll conducted for the newspaper El País and W radio in March found an 82% approval rating for Sheinbaum, up two points compared to January.
Sheinbaum more popular among men than women
El Financiero surveyed a total of 900 Mexican adults by telephone in March and published the results of the poll on Tuesday. The respondents live in all 32 federal entities of Mexico.
El Financiero detected an 85% approval rating for Sheinbaum among men — two points higher than the overall result — and an 81% approval rating among women.
Sheinbaum has made protecting women’s rights a priority for her government, but some antagonism toward her was expressed at last month’s International Women’s Day marches in Mexico.
Among the three different age cohorts into which El Financiero placed its poll respondents, the president was most popular with those aged 18-29. Sheinbaum had an approval rating of 86% with that cohort, 84% with respondents aged 50 and over and 78% among those aged between 30 and 49.
Mixed results in 5 key areas of governance
El Financiero asked the 900 poll respondents their opinion on the performance of the Sheinbaum administration in:
- Managing the economy.
- Combating corruption.
- Ensuring public security.
- Combating organized crime.
- Providing social support (welfare) to citizens.
Almost four in five respondents (79%) said that the federal government is doing a good or very good job in providing social support to citizens, while just 13% said the opposite.
The Sheinbaum administration has maintained all the popular social programs of its predecessor, such as the Youths Building the Future apprenticeship scheme and Sowing Life reforestation initiative, and created new ones — a scholarship scheme for public school students and a pension program for women aged 60-64.
The government’s next best result was on managing the economy. Almost seven in 10 respondents (68%) said that the Sheinbaum administration is doing a good or very good job in that area, even though the president will likely oversee a slowdown in economic growth in her first full year in office, or perhaps even a recession.
Sheinbaum has won significant praise for her perceived calmness and intelligence in dealing with United States President Trump amid on-again, off-again tariffs on Mexican exports to its northern neighbor. Some poll respondents perhaps thought of that poise when evaluating the president’s performance on managing the economy.
With regard to the government’s performance in ensuring public security in Mexico, the respondents were divided. Just under half (49%) said the government is doing a good or very good job in that area, while 43% said the opposite.
Homicides have declined since Sheinbaum took office, but violence remains a significant problem in various parts of the country.
The government’s second worst poll result in terms of its performance in the five areas listed above was on combating corruption. Just 29% of those polled said that the Sheinbaum is doing a very good or good job in that area while 60% said it is doing a very bad or bad job, up five points compared to February.
On Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Mexico recorded its worst score ever and in so doing fell 14 spots to a ranking of 140 out of 180 nations surveyed.
The CPI survey, whose results were published in February, referred to perceptions of corruption in 2024, which included the final nine months of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s presidency and the first three months of the Sheinbaum administration.
The worst poll result for Sheinbaum was on combating organized crime. Only 27% of respondents said that the government is doing a very good or good job, while 69% said the opposite, up seven points compared to February.
News of the so-called “extermination camp” case in Jalisco broke in early March, perhaps influencing some respondents’ perception of how the government is going in the fight against organized crime.
Sheinbaum, Security Minister Omar García Harfuch and other federal officials have pointed to the decline in homicides, thousands of arrests for high-impact crimes and the seizure of large quantities of drugs to support their assertion that the government’s security strategy is working. But there is evidently still a lot of work to do on security issues.
Just over six in ten respondents (61%) said that García Harfuch is doing a very good or good job as security minister, while 56% assessed the performance of Alejandro Gertz Manero as federal attorney general in a positive light.
How has the Teuchitlán case impacted Sheinbaum’s approval rating?
El Financiero asked poll respondents various questions about the Teuchitlán case involving a property in Jalisco where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel trained recruits, according to the government, and may have carried out murders and/or disposed of bodies.
A strong majority of respondents (86%) said they had heard about “the alleged training and extermination camp” in Jalisco, while 14% said they didn’t know about the case.
Fifty-six percent of those polled said the government is doing a very good or good job investigating and explaining the case, although it is the independent Federal Attorney General’s Office that is in charge of the investigation.
Only 43% of respondents said they believed the Sheinbaum administration will be “completely transparent” in the Teuchitlán case, while 49% said they thought the government would “hide information.”
Eight in ten respondents (80%) said that establishing the truth about what happened at the ranch in Jalisco is “very important,” while an additional 14% said that doing so was “somewhat important.”
Just over 80% of those polled said that missing persons cases are a “very important” issue for Mexico, while 54% said that the Sheinbaum administration is doing a very good or good job investigating those cases.
The president last month announced six “immediate” actions aimed at preventing abductions and strengthening authorities’ capacity to locate missing persons.
With reports from El Financiero
