Mexican Elections 2024

The (virtual) presidential candidates are:

Claudia Sheinbaum, for the alliance of Morena-PT-PVEM


Xóchitl Gálvez, for the alliance of PAN-PRI-PRD


Samuel García, for Movimiento Ciudadano (MC)

Claudia Sheinbaum is the candidate of the ruling coalition.
The big party of the coalition is Morena (National Renegeration Movement) a vehicle for president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who is the indisputed leader. Morena is formally a left-wing party, but only as AMLO understand leftism (low government spending, but focused on social aids in cash; nationalistic stance on energy; solidarity with left-wing causes in Latin America, whether they're dictatorships or democratic; centralization of decisions; not caring much about environment, women's rights or LGTB issues).
Sheinbaum is part of the leftist wing of the party, but has almost always yielded to AMLO.
The other parties are the fake Greens (PVEM), a Green Party banished by the other greens in the world. It favors the death penalty, for instance, and has been very quiet about environmental destruction under AMLO's rule and the Workers Party (PT), which was created in the 90s to counterbalance the big left wing partu of the time (PRD). It's fairly radical (originally Maoist) and still promotes friendship with North Korea.

Sheimbaum is a Physicist, a former student leader, has always sided with AMLO, and was the Major of Mexico City until she resigneda few months ago, in order to run for the Presidency. She is a non-religious Jew of Lithuanian and Bulgarian origins (her grandparents).

Sheinbaum became candidate by winning the opinion polls held for that matter (no primaries in Morena). The runner-up, former Mexico City major and Secretary of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard, who was seen as a more moderate candidate, claimed fraud in the polls, had no proofs, menaced to leave the party but finally disciplined himself.

Sheinbaum is the clear favorite at the start of the campaign.

She is also the clear frontrunner in the race.

Xóchitl Gálvez is the candidate of Frente Amplio, the alliance of the three traditional Mexican parties: PAN, PRI, and PRD, bound together on their opposition to AMLO and Morena.

PAN (National Action Party), is considered the Conservative party in Mexico (altough their mainstream is more like moderate Democrats), it has Catholic roots and was founded to confront the PRI, now their allies. Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón came from PAN.
PRI (Revolutionary Institutional Party) was the Big party that ruled Mexico for 70 years, after the Revolution. They became less and less social (and more technocratic) and lost to PAN in 2000. They came back to government with Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-18), but the government was tainted by rampant corruption and bad social results. PRI is a shadow of what it was.
PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) was formed in 1989, and glued together left-wing dissidents from PRI, the former Communists and Socialists and several other interest groups. AMLO was one of the left-wing dissidents of PRI who joined PRD, and twice their presidential candidate, but then parted away with his followers to form Morena. PRD has become now a fringe party.

Xóchitl Gálvez is an Engineer and self made businesswoman. She comes from a poor town and has indigenous ancestry. She is a member of none of the parties, although she worked for the government of PAN's Vicente Fox as the head of the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, and then was a major of the Miguel Hidalgo burrough in Mexico City as a candidate for PAN. Until a few days ago she was a Senator for the PAN-PRD-Movimiento Ciudadano coalition. Unlike PAN, she's clearly pro-choice and pro-LGTB rights. Her strength is her personal history, which runs against AMLO's claim that the traditional parties reppresent the only privileged and the rich by birth.

Gálvez beat other, more traditional, candidates of PRI and PAN: former Secretary of the Interior Santiago Creel (PAN), former Secretary of Tourism Enrique De la Madrid (PRI), a son of a former President and former Governor of Tlaxcala, Senator, Congresswoman and Ambassador Beatriz Paredes (PRI). There was to be a primary, but after Gálvez had a landslide type of lead in the polls, De la Madrid, Creel and Paredes dropped out, in that order.

Samuel García is to be the candidate of Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizen's Movement).

Citizen's Movement is a small party that has grown in recent years, grabbing two governorships, and presiding over Mexico's second and third biggest cities (Monterrey and Guadalajara, who are always bickering about who's number 2). Nominally left-of-center, MC is really a coalition of different local leaderships. It's clearly on the left in Mexico City; not so much in a more conservative city like Monterrey or in its' stronghold of Guadalajara and Jalisco.

For a while, it seemed that the runner-up in the Morena polls, Marcelo Ebrard, could shift to be the candidate of MC, but his indecisiveness made the party leadership pull the trigger of Samuel García, the governor of Nuevo León. García is pro-business, young, somewhat reckless and relies a lot on social media (his wife is a big influencer). He has the problem that his state Congress, dominated by PRI and PAN, insists on putting some kind of political enemy as his interim successor (no one can campaign and be governor at the same time).

García pulled a tremendous comeback -he was way down in the polls- to win the government of Nuevo León. He has to repeat the feat to be President, as he's today in a far third place.

There are other pre-candidates in MC, but García is the clear choice for that party.

Some gossip news.
Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum married today

The husband, Jesús Tarriba, was a classmate of hers at the University.
This is her second marriage.
She was married to former student leader and politician Carlos Imaz. Imaz was captured in video receiving a big bribe in cash in 2004. Sheinbaum divorced him a few months later.

I'll post some polls, discarding the obvious party pollsters.

Here's the first one, by Consulta-Mitofsky

Claudia Sheinbaum 57.5%
Xóchitl Gálvez 31.1%
Samuel García 11.4%

Sheinbaum is known by 81% of adults
Galvez is known by 66%
García is known by 36%

Reading!

The (virtual) candidates for Chief of Government of Mexico City (Mayor) are:

Clara Brugada, for the Morena-PT-PVEM coalition


Santiago Taboada, for the PAN-PRI-PRD coalition


Salomón Chertorivski, for Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens' Movement)

The head of government of Mexico City (which is divided in 16 borroughs, each with its own mayor), known outside the country as the Mexico City mayor, is the second most important electoral position in Mexico.
All mayors have been at least pre-candidates for the Presidency.

Clara Brugada is the candidate of the government coalition.
Brugada is the successful mayor of Iztapalapa, the most populous borrough in the city. She won handily in 2018 and by a landslide (29 percentage points) in 2021. Iztapalapa is overwhelming working class, with just a handful of middle class neighborhoods and several marginal ones. It's Human Development Index ressembles that of Thailand.
Brugada is very close to AMLO and is from the left wing of the party, the hard-liners. She actually lost the primaries to Omar García Harfuch, the chief of police, who was (presidential candidate) Claudia Sheinbaum's apointee, and was seen as more moderate. But the hard-liners rebelled against "the cop" and Brugada got nominated on the basis of gender equality.

Santiago Taboada is the candidate of the Front that unites the traditional parties thar lost power with the arrival of AMLO.
He is the successful mayor of Benito Juárez, the city's richest burrough (it's almost entirely middle-class). He also won handily in 2018 and was reelected by a landslide (a whooping 48 percentage points difference) in 2021. Benito Juárez is so conservative that it is said that if PAN nominates an inanimate carbon rod for mayor, it'll still win.
Taboada was hand-picked by the leaders of the united parties as the candidate, which led to surly faces of other PAN politicians who wanted the candidacy, and to open rebellion by two other mayors, one from PRI and one from PRD. He is accused of being the front man of the so-called "Real Estate Cartel", a group of politicians that get rich giving permissions to big buildings in regulated zones.

Salomón Chertorivski is the candidate for Movimiento Ciudadano (MC)
Chertorivski was Mexico's Minister of Health during the last years of president Felipe Calderon's tenure. He is credited for the construction of the Seguro Popular (Popular Insurance), a method that permitted self-employed people and people that work in the informal sector of the economy access to health care, with very small quotas (actually, it was free if you were in the bottom 40% of income). The Seguro Popular was abolished by AMLO, substituted by a National Welfare Institute that didn't work, and 50 million Mexicans are now vulnerable to catastrophic health expenses.
After that, Chertorivski was Minister of Economy for Mexico City, with mayor Mancera (PRD), and championed the campaigns for the raise of the real minimum wage. This has been only possible with AMLO's government, and is a big source of the President's popularity.
Chertorivski is now, and until the official campaigns begin, a very active federal Congressman for Movimiento Ciudadano (MC).
He is, like Morena's presidential candidate Sheinbaum, a non practicing Jew. He's from Ukrainian and Polish descent, and has been very vocal defending Ukraine, after the Russian invasion.

Unlike the country as a whole, where Morena's advantage is big, Mexico City will be harshly fought for.
Mexico City has traditionally leaned very much to the left of the rest of the country. The left has won every election. It was a bastion for PRD, also when AMLO was a candidate of that party.
In 2018, AMLO won by a slightly bigger majority than in the rest of the country. But in the mid-term elections of 2021, the Front of the traditional parties has a slight edge over Morena and its allies (46% to 45%).
Brugada may be seen as too radical by some of the Morena voters, Taboada may be seen as too much to the right by some of the opposition voters, and Chertorivski's party is still very small.
In top of that, Mexico City electors tend to divide their votes.

It will be a very interesting race.

The first casualty in this election has been former president Vicente Fox's X (Twitter) account.

Fox has had several recent mishaps with his tweeting.
First he reposted an antisemitic attack on Claudia Sheinbaum, and then had to apologize.
More recently, he had endorsed Argentinian extreme right wing candidate Javier MIlei, prompting criticism from inside the Front.
Last week, he commented a post against Mariana Rodríguez (the Tiktok and Instagram influencer who also happens to be candidate Samuel García's wife), calling her "lady in waiting", which in Spanish can mean scort (and that was the sense of his wording).
Not only Mariana replied, but the other two presidential candidates did too, including Xóchitl Gálvez, who runs for the same party that put Fox into power.
She posted that Fox offended every woman.
The Former President, 83, has lost so much contact with today's world, that he complained about his candidate's response.
On Monday, Fox's account was deleted. Presumably by him, which he denies. People suspect his wife deleted the account, which was doing more harm than good to the PAN (Conservatives) and Xóchitl's candidacy.

There's a second, BIG, casualty in the election.
Samuel García is no longer the presidential candidate for Movimiento Ciudadano.

He has managed to do something without precedent: he had the shortest presidential campaign in Mexican history, the most apparently successful campaign and the most disastrous at the same time. Everything at once.



In only a few days, a political strategy based almost entirely in merchandising was effectively disruptive. The couple of Samuel and Mariana, his wife, always smiling, traveling the North of the country in their Tesla, appealed to modernity, the future, the new, the fun. There was no content, phrases instead of proposals: the container was everything.
That was enough for García to gain enough momentum to trouble the candidacy currently in second place (Gálvez, of PRI-PAN-PRD). García was getting potential votes from the young and the least politized.
But the success rested on muddy soil. The Nuevo León congress, dominated by PRI and PAN insisted on choosing a political enemy as successor of García at the governorship. They had the law with them, and García decided -after trying to circunvent the legislation- to remain as a governor, rather than leaving his state to his foes.

In my opinion, the winner of all this is Claudia Sheinbaum, the federal government's candidate. Some pundits -mostly those who affirmed that MC is playing like a scab for the opposition- believe it is Galvez, but there is no automatic passage of opposition votes.

The thing is that, just like 6 years ago, the more liberal and democratic parties are bickering among them for the second place, and leave the populists alone, with their lead growing.

The last serious poll had Sheinbaum at 55% of real vote intention, Galvez at 29% and García at 16%.

Citizen's Movement (MC) has decided to define its presidential candidate until January, mainly because the Jalisco group stopped an "express designation" by the national leadership of the party.

Poll for Mexico City Chief of Government, by Indemerc. December 7-10

Clara Brugada (Morena) 48%
Santiago Taboada (Front) 32%
Salomón Chertorivski (MC) 5%

The rest, undecided.

The “would vote” for him/her is a bit closer:

Brugada 50%
Taboada 40%
Chertorivski 9%

Very interesting! Thank you, fbaezer for your thorough information to the election next year. It seems Claudia Sheinbaum is a front runner, she's very well educated and definitely can handle the job. Is Mexico ready for a woman president?

Of course Mexico is ready for a woman president. It’s very likely that the next president will be a woman.

As for Sheinbaum, the problem is if AMLO will try to be the strong man behind the presidential chair (he’ll try) and if she will let him do it (I’m afraid she will). This means another turn of the screw against democratic institutions.

The one thing that will get better with an eventual Sheinbaum government will be the relationship between the government and science/academia, which is terrible with AMLO, including the promotion of antiscientific crap and legal prosecution against “neoliberal” scientists.

The National Elections Institute ordered a magazine to retire all their copies from their shelves, due to a front page that was billed as "hate speech", after a claim by Sheinbaum.
The front page of Siempre! (a magazine that was very influential in the 60s and 70s, and had a great cultural supplement in the 70s-80s) was loathed by most, even granting a collective written protest from public people who are both for and against AMLO and Sheinbaum.
It enraged the Jewish community (remember, Sheinbaum is a non practicings Jew).
The director of Siempre!, a vitriolic PRI militant, daughter of the founder of the magazine, apologized, but nevertheless had kept the magazine on kiosks.

Yikes.

I’ve tried to find an article that portrays a national response to the Siempre! article, but in this case, I think my keyword skills are lacking.

If you happen upon evidence of public sentiment related to that cover and/ or the content of the article, I’d be very interested.

Again, much appreciation for your coverage of the race.

The cover was almost unanimously loathed, both from the left and right, except for a few radical AMLO-haters who remembered the President attacking, years ago, a Jewish opposition publicist as “hitlerian”. The cover was bad taste and antisemitic.
I think INE did well in ordering it out of the stands; if they didn’t, the campaigns would probably go lower and lower.

Glad to hear that the depiction was widely rejected. It was clearly antisemitic.

Do you think Sheinbaum picks up solidarity support specifically due to the attack—or no?