Mexican elections 2018

The articles in the foreign press saying Meade's campaign is doomed, and recent polls prompted the PRI (and notably, Peña Nieto's government) to mount an offensive against the Front's candidate, Ricardo Anaya.
Anaya was accused of money laundering, because years ago he sold an industrial warehouse to a phantom company. The problem of the accusation is that Anaya was the seller, and he didn't need to know if the company he was selling to was for real.
Anaya would've been in trouble if the accusers were not the PRI and Peña Nieto's government, whose gigantic corruption schemes are well known, but seldom prosecuted.
We have witnessed a political regression in these days, with the government openly using the powers of the State for mud slinging with factious motives.

We don't know yet the results of this row. I understand, from government sources, that their case is not strong enough. And, after a few days, the excesses -including incredible pressure on media- seem to have backfired.
President Peña, the substitute Attorney General and the Secretary of Governance have now passed to the defensive: "we are not meddling on the electoral process". Meade doesn't seem to have gained anything for this (in fact, the big PRI corruption scandals mildly forgotten are talked about now, again). The question is if Anaya gained ground (on the basis he's been mistreated by the government) or the big winner is AMLO (who has seen the mud slinging while having a soda and some pop-corn).

Bloomberg presented an interesting "poll of polls". It weighs different polls by the accuracy of a pollster’s past surveys from the 2006 and 2012 presidential campaigns, how recently the poll was taken, size and margin of error of the poll.

It now has:

AMLO (Morena) 40.3
Anaya (Front) 31.4
Meade (PRI) 19.3
Zavala (Independent) 5.2
Bronco (Independent) 3.0

Jaguar (Independent) - not shown - 0.8

A link to Bloomberg's Mexican Election page:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-mexican-election/

On the Mexico City elections, a new candidate.
Marco Rascón will contend for the local, tiny (so tiny I almost forgot their existance) Humanist Party, who got 3.2% of the vote in 2015.

Rascón is now a restaurant owner. But he's better known as the creator, in the early 90s, of Superbarrio Gómez, a real-life superhero who wore a wrestler's mask.

Superbarrio in Wikipedia (English):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbarrio_G%C3%B3mez




Here we see Rascón today and the character he created.

Rascón won't matter much in the election, but he'll be fun to watch.

Today was the first "fashion show" of the main candidates (the independents went yesterday).
They all gave speeches during the National Banking Convention, which brings together the financial sector.
Meade (PRI) was the obvious winner, in terms of applause. He was playing in his home turf, being Finance Secretary twice.

Meade

"The center of prorities is to meet the different needs of different people"
"I have a clear commitment to a responsible magament of public finance
"To fight violence and insecurity we must have a policy of tougher arms control and strengthen the law of Extinción de Dominio (which permits the State to take over all types of assets related to crime)"
"Politics and Public Servants are to be recognized; no one can be above the law"

Anaya
"We have to move into an economy of knowledge"
"We cannot plan the future with the variables of the present. It's a mistake to think in linear, and not exponential, change"
"We must bet on renewable energy, not in refineries. Cars will be electric by 2024"
"Mexico must move from manufacture to "mindfacture"
"Institutional change is needed to fight corruption, bolster competitiviy and reform the judicial system"
"The Attorney General is the war-room of the PRI campaign"

AMLO
"I will respect bankers. There's no need to be nervous"
"I'll lower the cost of government; there will be no luxuries, no more taxes, no hikes in the price of gasoline"
"My formula to spend better is to end corruption, which eats 20% of the budget"
"We don't need a new airport in Mexico City; it's extremely expensive"
"If they dare to make an electoral fraud, I'll go home to Palenque, and let's see who's going to tie the tiger".

sometimes I wonder what has happened to all the world's people. All of us seem to choose 'leaders' on the slim notion of "I like his audacity, or I like his sincerity, or omg he loves God (this is more of an American thing)".......I think we seem to pick the bullshit artist who pumps out our secret bullshit theories,..

I'm sorry if it sounds flip, fbaezer......I don't mean to sound flip....I think I'm just getting depressed over what appears to be vapidness, maybe only to me.

You're right, glitterbag.
All of these guys are bullshit artists, each with his own style.

You need a candidate like Lord Buckethead to help deflate all the pompous windbags.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Buckethead

Important news on the race for President.

INE (The National Electoral Institute) has determined that both Jaime Rodríguez (Bronco) and Armando Ríos Piter (Jaguar) were able to surpass the threshold of signatures due to irregularities (duplicate signatures, use of copies of the electoral ID, instead of the ID proper, etc).

This means they're out of the ballot. This, unless the Tribunal -to which both will appeal- decides otherwise.

So the race is now between the coalition candidates Meade (PRI), López Obrador (Morena) and Anaya (Front) and the independent conservative Margarita Zavala.

In another piece of news, Marco Rascón, the candidate for Mexico City of the tiny Humanist Party won the important support of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of beloved former president Lázaro Cárdenas. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was the founder of PRD (he left a few years ago, as AMLO gained track in the party) and first elected major of Mexico City

Time for some more news.

My friend the pollster has these numbers:

AMLO (Morena) 37%
Anaya (Front) 32%
Meade (PRI) 28%
Zavala (Independent, conservative) 2%
Bronco (Independent, populist) 1%

... with 28% undecided

But there are several other things in his poll. I'll name a few:

The center-left PRD; who was the third largest party in 2015, is going down to irrelevance. Most voters identify the Front with Anaya with PAN.
In terms of "vote security", Anaya is the strongest. He can win votes from Meade; but Meade seems at his peak.
It's a three way race in the North, Anaya has a small lead in the West, is clearly ahead in the Bajío region; he's practically in a tie with AMLO in Mexico City's metropolitan area, but AMLO is heading for a landslide in the South and Southest.
AMLO leads among the young, Anaya among middle-agers and Meade among the senior citizens.
Meade leads among the people with less than High School, AMLO among High School graduates and Anaya among people with university studies.

The most interesting thing is the erasure of ideological lines among the voters of the three coalitions:

On economics:
Anaya (Front) gets 28% of the vote of those who call themselves "leftist", while AMLO (Morena) gets 62% .
Yet, Anaya gets 30% of the vote of those who define themselves as "rightwingers" and AMLO gets 22%.
Meade is clearly gathering the most conservative voters (38% of rightwingers, only 10% of "leftwingers").
Anaya leads among "centrists".

On societal issues (gay rights, women rights, human rights):
Anaya gets 37% of the "liberal" vote and 29% of the "conservative" vote.
Meade gets 22% of the "liberal" vote and 29% of the "conservative" vote.
AMLO gets 39% of the "liberal" vote and 37% of the "conservative" vote.

Meade leads among those who go to church at least once a week; Anaya leads among those who go to church "on social occasions" and AMLO leads among those who go seldom or never.
Strangely enough Anaya, coming from the very catholic PAN, leads among protestants, and AMLO leads among catholics and atheists. Where is the PES (the Evangelicals' party) support for AMLO?

Tellingly (see the "issues" part on page 1), Anaya leads among those who think corruption is Mexico's biggest problem; AMLO leads among those who think the biggest problem is the economy and Meade leads among those who think the biggest problem is security.

On the Mexico City elections.

Independent candidate Xavier González Zirión is out of the ballot, because of fraud in the signatures sent. The only independent candidate will be Lorena Osornio, daughter in law of the leader of street vendors, Alejandra Barrios.

The (fake) Greens decided to part from the PRI coalition, and have their own candidate, Mariana Boy.

So the final list is:
Claudia Sheinbaum (Morena -populists-, PES -Evangelicals-, PT -Maoists-)
Alejandra Barrales (PAN -conservative-, PRD, Citizens' Movement -both center-left-)
Mikel Arriola (PRI)
Purificación Carpinteyro (Panal, the teachers' union party)
Mariana Boy (Greens)
Marco Rascón (Humanist -left-)
Lorena Osornio (Independent)

Poll by El Financiero has former soccer star Cuauhtemoc Blanco (PES-Morena-PT) with a comfortable 26 points lead in the race for governor of the southern state of Morelos.

Blanco can hardly express himself, but hell, he's a sports star.

--

Another former soccer star, Adolfo Ríos, "The Goalie of Christ", is the PES-Morena-PT candidate for major of the city of Querétaro.
I have not seen polls, but the city is a PAN stronghold.

I've read that Mexico's media has questioned the source of Anaya's family's wealth. I guess those questions aren't having much of an impact in regard to concerns about corruption.

Blanco is criticized for being completely incompetent as mayor of Cuernavaca, more so than a typical politician.

Heh, is Ríos as inarticulate as Blanco?

Anaya us accused of sellin an industrial warehouse to a phantom company for the equivalent of 2.7 million dollars. He argues that he bought the land when it was very cheap.
PRI accused him of being cahoots with the buyer, and that the buyer is involved in monet laundering.

All of the media has been pressured by the government to report throughly on this matter. I can say it because I direct a national newspaper.
The attorney general's office released a video when Anaya went to their offices and demanded to have a subpoena (is that the word? He demanded to be officially charged.
The illegal release of the video backfired on PRI.
PRI also leaked footage of Anaya at the wedding of the warehouse buyer, to proove they were friends. The film was illegally taken away from the buyer's house by the federal police, when they did a isearch.
It is clearly a State campaign against the candidate who said he'd have Pela Nieto and his cronies judged for corruption, and an attempt to have Meade surpass Anaya in the polls (and presumably gather the anti-AMLO vote around him).

The big winner of all this is AMLO. Anaya was moving up in the polls and stalled, while Meade did hardly win any support.

The problem is that PRI scandals are worth hundred of millions of dollars.

Blanco was completely incompetent and is totally inarticulate.

Ríos is articulate enough to become a soccer commentator on TV.

An interesting vote, yesterday, on the Senate.
They approved a PES iniciative, allowing doctors in public health services not to perform abortions if they sign a "consciousness clause".

In favor: PES, PRI (with several absences), fake Greens, and pro-Zavala PAN members.
Abstention: Panal.
Against: Morena-PT, PRD, MC, pro-Anaya PAN members.

The key votes were the pro-Zavala PAN members.

New poll by Consulta-Mitofski.

Dicounting "undecideds" ( most will abstain)

AMLO (Morena) 40%
Anaya ((Front) 30%
Meade (PRI) 23%
Zavala (Independent) 7%

This results support the idea that the government's offensive against Anaya did stop his momentum, but helped AMLO instead of Meade. And it also boosted Margarita Zavala.

AMLO in his own words (from an interview, last night):

"I have a lot of mistrust of everything they call civil society or independent initiatives."
"There isn't a movement like ours in the world looking for a transformation through peaceful means, with so many people."
"I'm not obsessed with being president to be a mediocre president ... I want to go down in history with (Benito) Juarez (whom he describes as Mexico's greatest leader.) It's not ego."
Asked if everyone but him is a "mafia of power": "Yes, basically."

The Baseball season starts, and Mexican Presidential candidates know it!

Both José Antonio Meade and Andrés Manuel López Obrador donned their baseball uniforms and played some ball (though not against each other)

Afterwards, they exchanged baseball filled remarks.

AMLO at bat


AMLO released a video where he said he has a new pitch, the Pejemoña (actually it was a very slow curve ball) to use against Trump.

Meade at bat


Meade replied he'd hit a homerun against the Pejemoña, that Anaya is on the full count and AMLO will strike out in his third -and last- at bat (AMLO has been candidate for President twice before).

In any case, I think AMLO -a diehard baseball fan- has a better stance at the batter's box. It ain't great, either.

And I guess Anaya, as the typical person from the Bajío region, is only interested in soccer.