MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico holds six state elections on Sunday which might be seemingly to increase President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s party, in one of many final main checks of his electoral clout earlier than the political focus shifts to the race to succeed him.
Lopez Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) and its allies are tipped to win a lot of the governorships up for grabs, tightening the party’s grip on the political panorama towards a fractured opposition.
Jointly accounting for about one tenth of Mexico’s 126 million inhabitants, Tamaulipas and Durango in northern Mexico, Aguascalientes and Hidalgo within the middle, and Oaxaca and Quintana Roo within the south and east elect new governors.
All are at present ruled by the opposition. Opinion polls counsel that solely Aguascalientes and Durango are seemingly to stay within the fingers of opposition events, which aren’t operating on a totally united ticket towards MORENA in any state.
Javier Oliva, a political scientist on the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), stated if MORENA wins a majority of the states, it ought to assist consolidate the president’s affect over the party.
“It would give Lopez Obrador a great deal of energy to resolve who would be the candidate in 2024,” Oliva stated.
Polls have persistently proven Lopez Obrador is extra common than MORENA, the party that was a automobile for his presidential marketing campaign in 2018, when he gained by a landslide.
Amid the pandemic, he has fallen wanting marketing campaign pledges to ramp up financial development and considerably scale back gang-fueled violence, however his roll-out of social welfare packages have buttressed his reputation.
Still, the elections come as a each day monitoring ballot printed by pollster Consulta Mitofsky confirmed assist for Lopez Obrador had slipped from over 62% on the finish of April to 54% on Friday.
Under Mexican regulation, presidents can solely serve a single six-year time period. Lopez Obrador’s successor is scheduled to be elected in June 2024. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard are among the many favorites for the job.
Political analysts have a tendency to view Sheinbaum as extra ideologically aligned with Lopez Obrador’s base, and Ebrard as extra reasonable, with higher enchantment to middle-class voters.
Victory in 4 of the six states would give MORENA management of 20 of Mexico’s 32 regional governments. Administrations allied with MORENA additionally govern two different states.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
