Let's talk polls!
This week we got our first set of good head-to-head polls showing that the opposition may stand a better chance than most expected...
Hi there!
I had a whole post planned for today, but alas, something more interesting came up: Fresh polls!
Not only did we get polls, but we got GOOD POLLS, too. So, rather than a post about how the coalitions will select their candidates – that’s coming next week, promise! –, I thought I’d focus on what those polls say and, as a treat – something I was planning on saving for Premium subscribers – how to gauge the different pollsters in Mexico.
Finally, I received a few questions about the El dedazo section in the last newsletter and why I thought it was clever. (First off, it is clever!) I’ll explain…
The Spanish word for finger is dedo. A derivative form of that is dedazo, which became the term to describe how PRI presidents during their 70+ years of one-party rule would select — or “point” to — their successors. Get it? El dedazo is the “coming next” section of this newsletter!
Thanks for reading. As ever, I hope you enjoy this post, and if you do, please consider giving the post a like, comment, and share it with friends or colleagues!
Until next time,
Jonathan Terluk
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Now, let’s…
For the last five years, dozens of polls have predicted who would lead the races to be Morena’s next presidential candidate. I can summarize those five years with two bullet points:
First, there were A LOT of them.
Second, in those five years, they haven’t changed much. Sheinbaum and Ebrard were always the most likely candidates to become Morena’s nominee. If you are tapped into Mexican politics at all, you didn’t really need a poll to tell you that.
However, what we got yesterday was A LOT more interesting: The first high-quality head-to-head polling showing voter preferences for Morena and the Frente Amplio por México (PAN-PRI-PRD coalition), MC, and undecideds.
I’ll say it here – if only to build suspense. These polls were rather surprising. Before I share them, let me explain what they look at in more detail.
Three Morena candidates, one Frente Amplio candidate
The poll tests voters’ preferences for three Morena candidates: Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbau, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, and Interior Minister Adán Augusto López. Those are the leading candidates in Morena’s nomination process and national polls.
Meanwhile, the poll only considers one potential PAN-PRI-PRD coalition nominee. Why? One reason is that several polls show Senator Xóchitl Gálvez’s lead over the other opposition coalition candidates growing quickly. Another reason may be that El Financiero plans on spreading more polls out over the coming days – this is something they do relatively often (much to my dismay).
What about the other parties? Were they included?
There are two answers to that question because there are two different sets of results:
One poll includes a potential (and likely) MC candidate (Nuevo Leon Governor Samuel Garcia), and
The other does not include him. That’s meant to simulate the outcome if the MC opts not to run a candidate. It also helps to give a sense of whether the MC would spoil the race in Morena’s favor.
Alright, enough with the waiting. Drumroll, please…
First up, I’ll share the poll with the MC.
[Just FYI, I’m not going to do that thing where I write out what the data in the poll says. I’ll let the charts speak for themselves. However, if someone needs it for accessibility reasons, please reach out, and I’ll happily start including it!]
At first glance, there are a few main takeaways:
This race is starting off far tighter than I expected: Yes, there are voters in Mexico who do not support President López Obrador, but Senator Gálvez’s 30% is a pretty strong position to be in when she hasn’t even clinched the nomination yet nor really started to grow her national profile.
Minister Ebrard marginally outperforms Mayor Sheinbaum against Gálvez, who has a good-sized lead over Interior Minister Adán Augusto López. That’ll make Ebrard’s team happy. However, does it matter? Probably not. Performing well in national head-to-head polling is not going to have a significant impact on Morena’s internal candidate selection process.
The best-case scenario for the Frente coalition is Minister López winning the nomination, but that’s not the likely outcome, so let’s not pay too much attention to it.
At most, the poll shows Morena having a 12-point lead over the opposition coalition. That’s not much, and it’s very far below the share of the vote with which President Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the election in 2018 – although to expect anyone to secure that same share of the vote is a bit absurd.
The second poll – that without Samuel Garcia – is equally as interesting. While the opposition coalition gains some support, so do Morena’s candidates – albeit to varying degrees. A few thoughts on this, as well:
However unlikely, as it stands now, the opposition’s best shot at winning is in a universe in which Minister López is Morena’s candidate, and the MC does not run a candidate. It’s very unlikely, but that race would seemingly be close.
The small share of voters who would support the MC if given the option are only marginally more likely to favor the opposition coalition over Morena in scenarios without an MC candidate. The exception is if Morena’s candidate is Minister López, where that support shifts more dramatically to the opposition. Overall, the differences in those polls suggest that the MC vote is pretty evenly distributed among individuals who prefer one major party over the other but favor a third option. That speaks to moderate public dissatisfaction with choice, in my view.
What to take away from the polls
Let’s try something new. I’ll make a few statements about what I think will happen next. However, I’ll caveat them with my approximated level of certainty and categorize them with a gambling analogy.
I’m not a gambling man, but if I were…
My money would be on…
These polls are going to give a boost to the opposition – albeit only a psychological one.
This poll — and subsequent polling like it (assuming there is) — will strengthen the morale of an otherwise downtrodden opposition. After five years of quite large defeats at every level of government, that will be necessary to keep the coalition together, particularly given that it lacks any ideological cohesion outside of wanting to bring down Morena.
It will also keep the opposition – particularly Senator Gálvez in the headlines. That brings me to my next point…
The race to be the opposition’s nominee is likely going to consolidate.
Senator Galvez’s rising poll numbers against the other candidates for the opposition coalition’s nomination are getting stronger by the day. There comes a point when the race will begin to consolidate.
One expectation: PAN candidates reduce their campaigning against Senator Gálvez to support her over the PRI and PRD candidates. Intraparty competition means that I’d expect PRI and PRD candidates not to bow out quite so quickly. It might not happen tomorrow, but I’ll be watching closely for signs of this happening over the coming weeks.
What I’m not ready to wager a bet on yet
There’s quite some time to go, Morena could definitely make some gains.
Both Mayor Sheinbaum and Minister López likely have quite a bit of space to improve their standing in polls. As mentioned in my last post, both individuals have lower levels of name recognition than Minister Ebrard.
The counterpoint is that this is also the case for Senator Gálvez. While her profile has grown in recent months, she does not have the same national profile that has come with being a cabinet minister or the mayor of Mexico’s most populous city. One El Financiero poll showed some 30% of voters do not know who she is.
And that’s where I’ll leave the talk of the El Financiero poll for the day. There will be more, but this was a good place to start.
PREMIUM FREEBIE:
What polls should you be looking at?
If you’re into US politics, it’s often hard not to be overwhelmed by the number of polling firms measuring political preferences. (One data point, FiveThirtyEight’s list of pollsters that ran at least five polls during the 2022 midterms contains at least 40 firms).
While Mexico certainly has public opinion pollsters, there are far fewer. But, much like in the US, their quality varies quite substantially.
I won’t rip off FiveThirtyEight’s pollsters' grading with letters. However, I will provide a bit of a loose categorization of how I tend to think about different pollsters and how reliable I tend to think they are.
In the list below, it’s also worth noting that some of these pollsters only rarely put out results, while others are affiliated with news outlets and tend to publish more frequently. For those that publish in news outlets, I’ll note them with an asterisk.
My top two:
El Financiero (by Alejandro Moreno)*
Parametría
Not necessarily bad — use these to inform, not guide assessments:
BGC
Buendía y Márquez
Consulta Mitofsky*
GEA-ISA
Varela y Asociados
Reforma*
El País*
Enkoll
Probably good to disregard for now:
SDP Noticias / México Elige*
Suasor
This is a relatively limited list. There are other smaller firms, and there are certainly some that I am missing as I mostly tried to do this off my memory. Overall, that’s a good starting point for how to think about which pollsters are better than others. I’d venture to say that if you asked other experts in Mexican politics how they ranked pollsters, their results might look quite similar.
There are some caveats that are worth mentioning:
Pollster accuracy often varies by what geographic scope they’re measuring: I’ve run the figures in the past to calculate how accurate pollsters were, and the results are incredibly inconsistent. Some pollsters are more reliable than others regarding state-level races, while others are more reliable for national races. My list above is a general framework but is probably more focused on national polling.
Daily polls from Consulta Mitofsky: The periodic polls conducted by this firm were pretty reliable in 2018, but I’ve grown to be a bit more skeptical toward them in the last several years. For one, new daily polling tends to reflect trends in the polls but not the actual numbers observed in polling aggregators or electoral results. This is a result of the methodology used for polling online – If I recall correctly, it’s all conducted online, which has some challenges we can dive into in another post if anyone is interested.
So that’s what I’m looking for when it comes to polls, and that’s why I was particularly excited when I saw that today’s poll was published in El Financiero. It’s been pretty reliable in the past. Will it be so in the future? Probably. But, as ever, there’s never guaranteed certainty.
[Two notes: First, Premium Subscribers will soon have access to interactive charts and aggregated polling data on the Next Sexenio website. Second, let me know if you’d be interested in some more granular analysis of pollsters and who has gotten what right historically! (These are the things that I like to nerd out on!)
One more chart…
I referenced it above but wanted to give its own section: Senator Xóchitl Gálvez – the candidate leading the opposition’s nomination race – is gaining momentum and doing so quickly.
At the start of July, El Financiero had Senator Gálvez tied with two other candidates: former Minister of the Interior and now-Congressman Santiago Creel and former Minister of Tourism (and son of a former president) Enrique de la Madrid.
Now, she’s leading that race by a six-point margin – that’s quite large in a race with so many candidates.
Attacks by President López Obrador during his morning press conferences may be boosting her national profile. Her name recognition is improving quite quickly, too.
Catch-up time
Keeping you up to date with the bits you might have missed:
Mexico’s Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF) – the ultimate arbiter of electoral decisions – rejected a ruling that would have upended the Frente Amplio por México’s selection process. The ruling requires the National Electoral Institute (INE), which organizes and oversees elections, to step in and define general guidelines for how parties should select their candidates. Ultimately, the ruling is also set to impact Morena’s coalition. (link in Spanish)
The INE also ordered President López Obrador to cease mentioning Senator Gálvez during his morning press conferences and for the president’s office to remove contents of the press conferences in which she is mentioned. Mexican electoral laws restrict the ability of politicians to campaign – exactly why candidates who are campaigning have stepped down from their government offices. The president criticized the INE’s ruling, saying it infringed on his speech rights. He did say he would stop mentioning her (but will he?). [One added bit: Polling from El Financiero suggests that the public was largely put off by the president’s mocking of Senator Gálvez.]
The National Action Party (PAN) alleged that Mexico’s interior minister, Luisa María Alcalde, mishandled some MX$170 million in public funds that were destined for the Youth Building the Future Program (Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro), a program that provides government-backed paid “internships” to young adults. Alcalde oversaw the program when she was labor minister. (link in Spanish).
In Monday’s post, I noted that a faction of the PRI broke off from the party and will remain independent in the Senate but aligned with the opposition to Morena. That fallout continues with one of those now-independent senators, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, calling the party’s leader Alejandro Moreno authoritarian and comparing him to President López Obrador in how he manages the party. All is not well in the PRI. The politically imploding black hole that is the PRI is becoming more of a singularity each day. (Sorry for the physics, I’m excited to see Barbenheimer!)
El dedazo de Next Sexenio: What’s coming next?
Here’s what I have on the docket to publish next.
A look at what comes next in the nomination process
A look at name recognition
A few history lessons to set the stage
Scene-setters: What’s the state of play in Mexico? We’ll look deeper into security, the economy, foreign affairs, and more.
Ideas for topics? Questions? Send me a message, and I’ll see what I can do!
Until next time…
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