AMLO’s Coalition Has Nearly 2-to-1 Lead Over Opposition in Poll
AMLO’s Coalition Has Nearly 2-to-1 Lead Over Opposition in Poll
(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s ruling party coalition is favored by 56% of voters ahead of the midterm elections, nearly twice the support garnered by an alliance of the nation’s former top parties, according to a poll by Parametria.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s Morena party is seen gaining ground in the June 6 election, where 500 lower house lawmakers, 15 governors and hundreds of mayors will be chosen, the poll shows. It will be the first major electoral test for AMLO, as the president is known, who swept to power in a 2018 landslide victory over parties that had ruled Mexico for decades.
Both Morena and opposition groups are running coalitions in at least half of the nation’s 300 election districts. The ruling party alliance’s strong showing in polls bodes well as it tries to become the first ruling coalition to keep control of congress at the midterms in almost three decades, Parametria’s founder Francisco Abundis said. At current polling levels, the opposition faces long odds.
“No one has reached the midterms with these numbers,” Abundis said in an interview, adding that if Morena holds the current lead “it’s a done deal that they’ll keep their majority.”
Long-time mainstays of Mexico’s party politics -- the PAN, PRI and PRD -- poll just a combined 29%, nine points less than the sum of their backing when running independently. In contrast, Morena’s coalition, including the Workers’ Party and Green Party, gains more support by banding together, according to the poll.
The opposition alliance isn’t as strong as the sum of its parts “because up until a short while ago, they were incompatible,” Abundis said. “Just because their leaders band together doesn’t mean that voters can reconcile these alliances.”
Polled separately, the Morena party has 41% of voter preference, compared with 17% for the PRI, 16% for the PAN, and 5% for the PRD, according to results that remove non-respondents and those who refuse to choose a party.
Those figures are largely stable in previous surveys by Parametria, with a January analysis showing 40% support for Morena, 19% for PRI, 15% for PAN and 5% for PRD.
The most recent poll was conducted Feb 28 to March 5, and surveyed 800 voters in person nationwide. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%
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