Mexican elections 2018

I had a talk yesterday with one of Mikel Arriola's top strategists. Arriola is PRI's candidate for Mexico City governor.
He confirmed what I wrote before in this thread. He says both leading candidates (Claudia Sheinbaum and Alejandra Barrales) are seen as leftists, which leaves a huge camp to the right "to be occupied by us". Their plan: to woo the conservative PAN voters who are unconfortable with Barrales as the Front's candidate, Thus. Arriola's stand against abortion, gay rights ans, now, in favor of diminishing the penal age to 16.
I asked him if the candidate believed in all that. The answer: "He's confortable with it, he goes to mass every now and then".
Their real goal, he confided, is getting over one million votes (around 20% of the expected vote) and carrying them to presidential candidate José Antonio Meade.

Of course, the one million vote calculation-goal was made by the national PRI.
All this means that the extreme move to the right in Mexico City is part of a national strategy to make Meade competitive nationwide,.
The Presidency is well worth a mass, one may quote.

Today, it was a strange day in the campaigns.
All candidates agreed among themselves and with President Peña Nieto.
The President and the candidates quoted and praised each other.
Weird.
Who made the miracle? Donald Trump and his menace to send the National Guard to the border.

"This is a matter of national unity, not a matter of political campaigns. It's a matter of the country": Anaya

"We need a realationship of friendship and cooperation. No walls. No use of the forced. Do not bet to be a bad neighbor":

"It is the moment for everyone to unite in defense of the dignity and sovreignity of the nation": Meade

"At the time to defend national dignity, we all speak with one voice and demand respect": Zavala

A few polls to comment (discarding "undecideds")

Mendoza Blanco:
AMLO (Morena): 43%
Anaya (Front): 33%
Meade (PRI): 20%
Zavala (Independent): 4%

Parametría came with two very different measurements:

Alliances:
Morena-PES-PT: 40%
PAN-PRD-MC: 29%
PRI-Green-Panal: 23%
Independent: 8%

With only the candidates' names:
AMLO: 44%
Anaya: 23%
Meade: 18%
Zavala: 15%

I'm not sure why the differences, but it may be that some people think that PRD's candidate is AMLO and that PAN's candidate is Zavala. Or the pollster may be pulling a trick.

Several pieces of news in the last days.

The most important one:

Mexico’s electoral tribunal has included Jaime Rodríguez, El Bronco, a colourful, independent right wing populist candidate, on the ballot for this July’s presidential election, despite the fact 58% of the signatures supporting his nomination were invalidated.
The Tribunal voted 4-3. The 4 magistrates who favored Bronco
are said to be close to PRI.
The decision also meant a worrying fracture between INE (the citizen led electoral institute) and the Tribunal.

The reactions of the other candidates are telling:
Meade (PRI): We welcome El Bronco to the race.
Anaya (Front): It was a surprising and inexplicable move, but we must abide to the Tribunal.
AMLO (Morena): It's another stripe on the tiger (of electoral fraud). President Peña Nieto ordered the Tribunal to include El Bronco.
Zavala (Independent): He's the candidate of the Tribunal, I am the candidate of the people.

It is believed that El Bronco will take away votes both from AMLO and from conservative Zavala in the North of the country.
This belief may be excessive and wrong. When he won the governorship of Nuevo León, Bronco took votes mostly from PRI. And now he is weakened by the shadow of several hundred thousand fake signatures.

I asked a friend who is closely acquainted to former President Calderón and his wife, independent candidate Margarita Zavala:
"Is Margarita as stupid as she seems?"
His answer:
"More than what you can imagine. And, in comparison, Felipe (Calderón) is a liberal".

The PRI-Green alliance in the southern state of Chiapas, the Greens' stronghold fell apart, even if it doesn't look like it.
The local Greens wanted the candidate for governor to be one of their own, but PRI did not let them, and the Green Party at the national level sided with PRI.

So...
The Greens in Chiapas split in three. Most of them sided with Morena; another faction managed to have a Green candidate for the Front; and a minority remained with their tradicional ally, PRI.
The outgoing governor refused a candidacy for a sure seat in the Senate as part of the PRI-Greens alliance. It seems that he put his chips with Morena.

The latest Massive Caller poll in that state has Morena at 51%, Front at 32% and PRI-Greens at 17%.

Finally, there were two debates this morning, among candidates for Mexico City.
One debate for the tiny ones; another for the big ones.

The "tinies" debate was kind of dull. It was clear for me that the only one among them who has an idea of how to run the city is Marco Rascón, of the Humanist Party. Among other things, he wants to cut working hours and to stagger working hour shifts and transit.
The fun part about this debate was about accents. The Green's candidate Mariana Boy couldn't help having a -not very votable- heavy posh Mexico City accent and independent candidate Lorena Osornio tried -to no avail- to hide her tough barrio accent.
Panal's candidate Purificación Carpinteyro was incredibly inarticulate.

The "biggies" debate was vivid and fun but, mostly, a mud-slinging feast.
PRI's candidate Mikel Arriola, who is in third place according to polls, dedicated a lot of his time to attack the Front's Alejandra Barrales, who is in second place. The big issue: Barrales has more houses than her money could buy.
Barrales attacked Claudia Sheinbaum, who leads the polls. Her issues: the children dead at Rebsamen school, during last September's earthquake - the school was in the borough governed by Sheinbaum and the civil protection tests were overlooked (probably because of a bribe)- and the candidacy of Rigoberto Salgado, former Tláhuac borough major, accused of protecting drug trafficking.
Both Barrales and Sheinbaum dodged the attacks, but not very skillfully. And both said that Arriola's comments about corruption were ridiculous, given that he's the candidate for PRI.
Barrales was once caught by the cameras sulking, while Arriola was attacking her.
Arriola seemed to have fun, to not believe much of what he was saying and ended up asking Sheinbaum is still smokes pot. Talk about being nasty.
Sheinbaum worked well on her academic experience, explained quite well some of her proposals, but had the nasty habit of saying all the time that she led the polls, and seemed to despise her rivals. She'd won the debate were it not for her excessive pride.

Well, I was right.

Polls in the key state of Veracruz, for governor:

GEA-ISA
Yunes Linares (Front) 37%
García (Morena) 36%
Yunes Zorrilla (PRI-Greens) 26%
Sheridan (Panal) 1%

Massive Caller
Yunes Linares (Front) 40%
García (Morena) 37%
Yunes Zorrilla (PRI-Greens) 19%
Sheridan (Panal) 4%

It will be a tough race.

The new Mexico City airport, under construction, has become the biggest discussion issue in the presidential campaign, so far.

AMLO is against it, and wants the works halted. He says it is a big corruption scheme. He prefers to have 2 airports, the old one and one in what is now the military base of Santa Lucía. The problem for this, say the experts, is a big risk of collision routes. The fact, that the airport has to halt take-offs and landings every time they use Santa Lucía.
Meade is obviously for it. So is Anaya, who only says all contracts should be revised.

Now Mexico's richest man, Carlos Slim, has stepped into the discussion. He says AMLO does not take into account the positive social and economic impact of the new airport, and that businessmen are worried when people are against rational investment decisions.
AMLO's answer: President Peña Nieto and former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari told Slim to attack me. It's the Mafia of Power.

A brief comment on the first official debate for Mexico City, held last night.

The candidates of the Front (Barrales) and PRI (Arriola) attacked the leading candidate (Sheinbaum, Morena), but she dodged the attacks quite well.

Rascón, the candidate of the tiny Humanist Party made a rough attack on Arriola: "His candidacy is an insult to the city's memory, a provocation against freedom and conquered rights... Arriola means the city of only one form to make a family, only one form of being young, only one form of sexuality, only one religion; he want's to send teenagers to jail instead of sending them to school, and to deny the very existence of the gay-lesbian community... he prefers to dissapear people than to bring them to trial: he's Batman. No wonder the other parties in the Meade presidential coalition do not want him".
Arriola responded by remembering Rascón is SuperBarrio, and gave him the "bad news" that he wants to regulate marches and demostrations, and that marchers should clean the streets after their protests.
Rascón retorted: "Let's have a lucha libre fight between SuperBarrio and Batman".
For a while they acted like high school kids.

The Green candidate (Boy) managed herself better than expected, and the Panal candidate (Carpinteyro) looked really like a psychotic telenovela villain: she made clear, though, that she's in favor of decriminalizing marijuana and against Arriola's restrictive views.
The independent candidate couldn't even express herself and was mocked in social media.

A brief poll among the guys at the newspaper had Sheinbaum as the unanimous winner. She's en route to a landslide.

The latest national Consulta-Mitofsky poll has AMLO expanding his lead:

Discarding "undedideds":

AMLO (Morena) 43%
Anaya (Front) 28%
Meade (PRI) 23%
Zavala (Independent) 5%
Bronco (Independent) 1%

The first Presidential debate is on Sunday. If somebody doesn't knock AMLO out, he'll be on a roll, and Mexico will ride the populist bandwagon.

I am getting quite a bit of rather angry anti-AMLO content on my Facebook feed (I have good friends in Mexico). This may say a lot about the friends I keep.

My Facebook feed heavily favors Anaya (for what it's worth).

I'd say Anaya is the candidate of Mexicans that are more integrated to the rest of the world, regardless of political ideology. AMLO is way too nationalist, with dreams of autarchy and a clear nostalgia for the past (Mexico in the 60s and 70s, a bit of what Brexit voters went after, regarding the UK). Meade appeals only to fear of an AMLO government (as if Peña Nieto's had not been a disaster).
I still don't trust Anaya, but all the other options are worse.

A new poll and some ridiculous news.

The poll, by BGC:

AMLO (Morena) 40%
Anaya (Front) 32%
Meade (PRI) 22%
Zavala (Independent) 5%
Bronco (Independent) 1%

The ridiculous news:
Former independent candidate Armando Ríos Piter, El Jaguar has announced his support for Meade, and appeared with the candidate for PRI.
El Jaguar was dropped from the ballot for faking over 900 ,000 citizen support signatures.

Nice support: somebody's hand got cramps. LOL

Actually, c.i., INE had an App, you had to scan your voters ID and then sign.
Ríos Piter used photocopies from a database to bloat his numbers

Heard from a Morena activist:
"You, friends from the Front, have too much world and too little Mexico".