Peña Nieto’s candidacy for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) — the party that ruled this country for seven decades until it was voted out of office in a 2000 election that was heralded as Latin America’s equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall — is leading by about 15 percentage points over its closest rival in most polls.
According to the latest Mitofsky poll released last week, Peña Nieto has 44.4 percent of voter support, followed by leftist candidate Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador with 28.7 percent, and center-right candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota with 24.6 percent. The poll doesn’t count non-responses.
Granted, there could be last-minute surprises. A growing everybody-against-Peña Nieto student movement known as “Yo soy 132” has emerged in recent weeks, accusing Mexico’s two major television networks of promoting Peña Nieto’s candidacy. The student protest movement has spread like wildfire in social media, and has helped Lopez Obrador climb in the polls.
But while there are 14 million Mexicans under 23 who will be eligible to vote for the first time in a presidential election, and many of them may back Lopez Obrador, most political insiders doubt that the student movement will have any major impact on election day because about 75 percent of Mexico’s youth don’t vote.
In addition, there is the fear factor. Lopez Obrador scared many Mexicans in 2006, when he lost that year’s election by less than one percentage point and led massive marches to protest what he still today says was a fraudulent result. His critics, including former President Vicente Fox, describe him as a radical populist who would be Mexico’s version of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
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