Only three weeks after the start of the presidential campaign, a survey by Mexican newspaper Reforma shows that Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate for MORENA’s “Together we will make history” coalition, has increased her lead over the other two candidates, now with 58% in voting intentions, that is, 24 percentage points above her closest rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, of the “Goes for Mexico” alliance.
Sheinbaum skyrockets in the polls
This is the third opinion poll carried out by the newspaper and one can see the clear increase in favor of the MORENA candidate: first scoring 53% in August, then 54% in December last year, during the period of internal elections in her party and pre-campaign. Now, three months later and with three weeks of campaigning, her electoral preference has grown by 4 more percentage points.
The second in electoral preference, Xóchitl Gálvez, has also had changes in voter intention. In August 2024 she started with 33%, only 20 points below Sheinbaum, but by December she dropped to 29%, and has now rebounded to 34% for this month, that is, one point above where she started her race.
The variations of the opposition candidate have a possible explanation in the changes of candidate by the Movimiento Ciudadano party, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, who went from 14 to 17% in the first polls (when Samuel García, governor of Nuevo León, was the candidate) to only 8% in the most recent one. However, it is noted that the 9 points lost by the orange party did not go to the opposition candidate, but were distributed widening Sheinbaum’s advantage and allowing Gálvez to return to the preference she had at the beginning of her unveiling.
Gálvez asks for illegal support to her campaign
In view of this unfavorable panorama for the proposal represented by the PRI-PAN-PRD, candidate Xóchitl Gálvez has avoided talking about her performance in the polls. Recently, during an event called “Dialogues for Democracy”, organized by the Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic (COPARMEX), the former PAN senator limited herself to say that the poll does not keep her awake at night, besides affirming that it does not represent the reality in terms of voting intentions.
However, during the same event, and contrary to the electoral laws, Galvez asked the businessmen gathered there to “fight, to get their act together” in favor of her campaign and even urged them to take two and a half months off from their companies so that “they can convince their employees, the people of the community” to vote for her.
This call to influence from the business sphere is prohibited according to Articles 159, 414 and 447 of the General Law of Institutions and Electoral Procedures, reason why José Medina Mora, president of said confederation, has already rejected Gálvez’s exhortation since his organization is “highly political, but totally non-partisan” and that they can only “promote that citizens go to vote”.
Citizen perception
Among the other data provided by the survey is that 65% believe that Claudia Sheinbaum will win the election on June 2. On the contrary, only 15% consider it possible that Xóchitl Gálvez will win the election, a percentage far below her declared voting intention. 36% of those polled stated that they have not yet decided their vote yet.
Within the survey, the other candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Movimiento Ciudadano party, registers a voting intention of 8% and a perception of 2% about his possibility of winning.
Along with these results, another one that calls attention is that before the question “What is more likely in the presidential election?”, 61% responded that the MORENA candidate will surpass the votes obtained by López Obrador in 2018, who won the Presidency of Mexico with more than 30 million, which represented 53% of the votes cast.
This perception maintains a correlation with the current approval of López Obrador, who only six months after leaving office maintains a historic popular approval for a Head of State with 73%. This represents an increase of 11% compared to the December survey.
This article was translated and adapted by an article originally published on De Raíz.
