by Miguel Toro Entering the last month of the campaign, the election seems as decided as ever. A new poll released today by Alejandro Moreno on El Financiero newspaper continued the trend of pollsters over the last week that have found front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) reaching 50% (or more) on effective preferences in surveys. These polls come on the heels of the backlash that several prominent businessmen received after trying to persuade employees through internal memos from not voting for AMLO arguing that his economic policies could translate to them losing their jobs. In the three main polls released in the last week, AMLO has increased around 4 percentage points while PAN-PRD (Frente) coalition candidate Ricardo Anaya has lost around the same quantity. During last week, news media outlets got hold of some of the internal memos that were sent to employees of firms controlled by businessmen like Alberto Bailleres (Grupo Peñoles) and Germán Larrea (Grupo México). Bailleres and Larrea are the second and third richest men in Mexico as their conglomerates control a variety of firms such as the Peñoles mines or the Palacio de Hierro department store in the case of the former, and the freight railway firm Ferromex or the Cinemex movie theatre chain for the latter. These two men were part of the original group of 5 businessmen that AMLO accused in late April of conspiring with the government to try and push a second place candidate like Ricardo Anaya to a more competitive spot in the election. All of these men denied the accusations (as well as the government who said they would never support such an idea and even less as it was not their own candidate José Antonio Meade), but in the public image, it doesn’t matter if they were originally negotiating some form of agreement, as to AMLO voters they are part of those “mobs in power” (mafia del poder) that are the reason why Mexico has many problems. In this simplified version of one of the driving narratives of the AMLO campaign, it is easy to see how the memos sent to their employees were heavily criticized as being a desperate attempt at reducing the deficit between AMLO and Anaya as they fear ‘losing their privileges’ instead of a genuine worry about the economic policies furthered by the leading candidate. It is important to note, that to many Mexicans the powerful business tycoons of the country like Bailleres and Larrea are seen as rent-seekers, who benefit from the crony capitalism that their ties to the government allows, instead of being innovative and responsible businessmen that care for the wellbeing of their employees. With respect to the El Financiero poll, AMLO’s advantage over Ricardo Anaya grew to 26 percentage points (50% for AMLO by 24% for Anaya), with incumbent party PRI candidate José Antonio Meade in close third place with 22%. According to the aggregate summary of the “poll of polls” from Oraculus.mx AMLO has a 48% of voting intentions, for 29% from Anaya and 21% of Meade. Its predictive model gives López Obrador a probability of 94% of winning. Figure 1. Poll of polls (up to June 4th, 2018) Lopez Obrador's margin is bigger than ever one month away from election Source: Oraculus.mx
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Manuel Franco
4/26/2023 02:02:23 am
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