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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2006 
Leftist Candidate Gets Boost in Hopes to Win Mexican Presidency
 Ioan Grillo - Associated Press
| | Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends an interview with Reuters in Mexico City. Millions see him as the first politician to care about the poor in a country where, despite huge oil riches, one in five people cannot afford to eat properly. (Reuters/Daniel Aguilar) |
Mexico City Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador got a boost in his hopes to gain the Mexican presidency Monday with a new opinion poll showing him 10 points ahead of his closest rival and his party making a surprisingly strong showing in local elections in the nation's most- populous state.
Analysts said the gains, which come less than four months before the July 2 presidential ballot, demonstrate the ability of Lopez Obrador to connect with voters outside his leftist base and reflect a weak campaign by the conservative candidate Felipe Calderon.
Lopez Obrador looks like a very difficult man to beat, said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Only a tremendous scandal could rock him now.
The poll, conducted by Mexico City newspaper El Universal, gave Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of the capital, 42 percent of the vote compared to 32 percent for Calderon, of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party.
Roberto Madrazo, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, was in third place with 24 percent.
The survey was conducted based on personal interviews with 1,500 adults from March 3-6. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
In Mexico State, home to 14 million people 13 percent of the nation's population Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party made substantial electoral gains in a region where it has traditionally been in third place.
With about 88 percent of the votes tallied from Sunday's balloting, the PRD had 31.3 percent of votes for the state's 75 legislative seats, barely trailing the long-dominant PRI, with 31.5 percent of votes.
Democratic Revolution also won the mayorship of the state's largest city, Ecatepec, and held the city hall of the second-largest, Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl.
National Action fell into third place with 28.5 percent of the votes.
Mexico State is viewed as a kind of electoral laboratory: Looping round the north, east and west of Mexico City, it includes the capital's toniest suburbs and its most squalid slums, as well as traditional Indian farming villages and sprawling industrial parks.
Jorge Buendia, public relations director for the polling firm IPSOS Bimsa, said that Democratic Revolution's gains were due to Lopez Obrador's potent presidential bid.
We are seeing proof of the Lopez Obrador effect, Buendia said.
The silvery-haired Lopez Obrador rose to prominence as a fiery speaker who claims to represent Mexico's millions of poor and forgotten. Since starting the election campaign in January, however, he has moved toward the political center, promising a balanced foreign policy and fiscal responsibility.
Lawyer Enrique Valdes, 56, said he voted for Democratic Revolution in Sunday's elections because he thinks Mexico needs something new.
It's positive that different political forces advance, Valdes said. We need a change.
Calderon has waged a campaign attacking Lopez Obrador, saying he is an authoritarian populist and accusing him of receiving support from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
However, Grayson said that Calderon's focus on mudslinging has done him no favors.
If Calderon is flailing at Lopez Obrador and Lopez Obrador is going up in the polls, it shows he is doing something wrong, Grayson said.
Associated Press writer Gloria Perez in Toluca, Mexico, contributed to this report. |
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