The Morena party is the early favorite to win the 2024 mayoral election in Mexico City, a recent poll found.
Voters in the capital will elect a new mayor on June 2, 2024, the same day that Mexicans will choose a new president.
Morena, the party founded by President López Obrador, came out on top in four mock races set up by polling company Enkoll, which surveyed just over 1,000 people earlier this month for the newspaper El Universal.
In each of the contests, the current mayor of the Mexico City borough of Benito Juárez, Santiago Taboada, was put forward as the candidate for the alliance made up of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), while Salomón Chertorivski, a federal deputy who served as health minister for just over a year in the 2006-12 government of former president Felipe Calderón, represented the Citizens Movement (MC) party.
The candidate for the alliance made up of Morena, the Labor Party (PT) and the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) changed in each of the four contests.
Omar García Harfuch, Mexico City’s security minister since late 2019, won the first mock race, with 53% of respondents saying they would vote for him if the mayoral election was held on the day they were polled. Taboada, a lawyer by profession who represents the PAN in Benito Juárez, attracted 39% support, while just 8% of respondents said they would vote for Chertorivski.
Clara Brugada, currently serving as mayor of the borough of Iztapalapa, represented the Morena-PT-PVEM alliance in the second contest, attracting 52% support compared to 40% for Taboada and 8% for Chertorivski.
Mario Delgado, Morena’s national president and a former federal lawmaker, was backed by 49% of respondents in the third mock race, while Taboada and Chertorivski had support of 42% and 9%, respectively.
The percentages were exactly the same in the fourth contest, in which Ricardo Monreal, a former senator who is currently an aspirant to Morena’s presidential election candidacy, was put forward as the Morena-PT-PVEM representative and proved more popular than the potential PAN-PRI-PRD and MC candidates.
Enkoll also asked poll respondents to nominate their preferred candidates for Morena, the PAN and the PRI.
García, who is perhaps best known for being targeted in a brazen cartel attack in Mexico City in 2020, was the top pick for Morena, with 35% of those polled selecting him as their preferred candidate. Brugada, who also served as Itzapalapa mayor between 2009 and 2012 and as a federal deputy before then, ranked second with 27% support followed by Delgado with 24% and Monreal with 14%.
Taboada was nominated by 43% of respondents as their preferred PAN candidate, ahead of Lia Limón, mayor of the borough of Álvaro Obregón, with 27% support. Mauricio Tabe, mayor of the borough of Miguel Hidalgo, was the preferred PAN candidate of 18% of those polled, while Senator Kenia López Rabadán was nominated by 12%.
Adrián Rubalcava, mayor of the borough of Cuajimalpa, was easily the top PRI choice, with 55% of respondents nominating him as their preferred candidate for that party. Federal Deputy Cynthia López was chosen by 34% of those polled, while Deputy Xavier González was nominated by 11% of respondents as their preferred PRI candidate.
Another potential candidate for the PAN-PRI-PRD alliance is Cuauhtémoc Mayor Sandra Cuevas, who announced on Monday that she planned to contest the 2024 mayoral election.
Insecurity was nominated as the main problem Mexico City faces by 55% of those who responded to the Enkoll poll. Robberies including muggings was the main security concern of almost six in 10 respondents.
The current Mexico City mayor is Martí Batres, who took the reins from Claudia Sheinbaum when she resigned in June to focus on winning Morena’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election. Sheinbaum won the 2018 mayor election for Morena, receiving just over 47% of the vote.
Over two-thirds of poll respondents – 68% – approved of the presidential aspirant’s performance as mayor, suggesting that there is enough goodwill for Morena to support the triumph of the party’s mayoral candidate on June 2, 2024.
The position of Mexico City mayor is considered one of the most powerful political positions in Mexico. López Obrador, mayor of the capital between 2000 and 2005, used the position as a springboard for his ultimately unsuccessful 2006 tilt at the presidency.
In addition to Sheinbaum, another former Mexico City mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, is seeking to contest the 2024 presidential election as the candidate for the alliance led by Morena.
With reports from El Universal
