AMLO, Josefina and Quadri plan to attend debate with #YoSoy132 [In Spanish]

ADNPolítico, 6/6/2012

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Josefina Vázquez Mota and Gabriel Quadri accepted to attend the debate organized by the #YoSoy132 movement. Enrique Peña Nieto will most likely decline as the student movement has openly declared itself against the PRI-PVEM presidential candidate.

Last Wednesday, the student movement uploaded a promotional video on YouTube that invites the presidential candidates to participate in the debate.

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I will accept the election results: AMLO [In Spanish]

Animal Político, 6/7/2012

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, left-wing presidential candidate, assured that he will accept the election results and that there will not be any post-electoral conflict because he will win and thus there will be a national celebration on July 1st.

“There will not be any conflict this 2012, I will give everything from my part, I have fought to transform this country. But if the people want more of the same, then what can I do? It would be collective masochism,” expressed the presidential candidate during his participation at Tercer Grado, a political analysis program produced by Televisa.

Read more and view interview video here.

Election Update and the #YoSoy123 movement: Parametría [In Spanish]

Carta Paramétrica, 6/4/2012

According to the latest poll results by Parametría, the frontrunner in the presidential electoral race is still Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI-PVEM) with 43% of effective voter preference. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD-PT-MC) is located in second place with 30% of effective voter preference. This signifies a reduction of 13 points between the first and second place, the smallest difference registered by Parametría so far.

Josefina Vázquez Mota (PAN) appears in third place with 24% of effective voter preference, and Gabriel Quadri (Nueva Alianza) obtains 3% of effective voter preference.

Parametría also carried out a survey about the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico. Based on the poll conducted from May 23rd to May 25th, 55% of the participants knew about this student movement. Eight out of ten respondents who knew about the #YoSoy132 movement believe that the students protested against Enrique Peña Nieto.

For 52% of the respondents, the PRI was the target of the protest; 29% mentioned that Televisa was the focus of the critique and 26% that the media was the target. In addition, 23% believes that the protesters stood up against the manipulation of information by the media.

View complete Parametría polls results and graphs here.

Poll of Polls: What is the true distance between Peña Nieto and López Obrador [In Spanish]

ADNPolítico, 6/1/2012

The poll released by Reform last Thursday reveals that Andrés Manuel López Obrador is only four points behind frontrunner Enrique Peña Nieto in the presidential race. This is between 13.5 and 17 points different from other three polls that coincide with this release date.

The newspapers Reforma, El Norte, Mural and Metro carried out their measurements from May 23rd to May 27th, coinciding with the polls by Milenio/GEA-ISA, El Sol de México/Parametría and Consulta Mitofsky.

Milenio/GEA-ISA registered 45.9 points for Peña Nieto and 24.9 for López Obrador, that is, a 21-point difference. On the other hand, El Sol de México/Parametría calculated 45 points for Peña Nieto and 27 for López Obrador, establishing an 18-point distance. Finally, Consulta Mitofsky gave 44.9 points to Peña Nieto and 27.4 to López Obrador, a 17.5-point difference.

All of these results did not take into consideration the respondents who do not have an answer, and so become measurements of effective voter preferences.

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Election Update: Unusual increase of Twitter followers for presidential candidates [In Spanish]

UNAM, Observatorio Electoral 2012
May 2012

With the second presidential debate approaching this week, the Observatorio Electoral of UNAM recorded unusual increases of Twitter followers for the presidential candidates.

First, during the days before and after the first presidential debate, there occurred a massive exit of Twitter subscribers from both the Josefina Vázquez Mota and Enrique Peña Nieto accounts.

Second, disproportionate growth occurred in the Twitter account of Gabriel Quadri, as it saw an increase of 60,000 subscribers in Facebook and Twitter. This growth of 113% is almost three times the former increment in Peña Nieto’s account when it reached 25,000 subscribers following the incident at the Feria Internacional del Libro in December. The increase of Quadri followers happened on the third day after the first presidential debate.

Also unusual is what occurred in late April, as Peña Nieto and Vázquez Mota rose to 90,000 and 40,000 subscribers in a day, respectively.

Read more and view graphs here.

Elections Debate: The Economist

The Economist, Economist Debates

In this online forum, political experts such as Luis Videgaray Caso, General coordinator of the presidential campaign of Enrique Peña Nieto; Roberto Gil Zuarth, Head of the presidential election campaign of Josefina Vázquez Mota; and Tom Wainright, Mexico City bureau chief for The Economist, debate on the current state of Mexican elections.

Read their remarks, opinion, and electoral forecasts here.

A handbrake-turn to the left in the polls

The Economist, 5/31/2012

Opinion polling is a tricky business, and politicians are always quick to cry bias or inaccuracy when a survey shows them doing badly. Nonetheless, the poll published today in Reforma, a daily newspaper, got everyone’s attention. According to the survey, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), is now only four percentage points shy of Enrique Peña Nieto, the long-time frontrunner from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The poll marked the beginning of the “deflation” of the Peña bubble, Mr López Obrador claimed on hearing the news.

The handy poll of polls at ADN Politico provides some useful context: most other surveys suggest that the gap between the PRI and the PRD is still between 10 and 20 points. (If these numbers don’t tally with what you see, it could be the difference between polls that include undecided voters and those that factor them out.) A further caveat: though Reforma’s polls have a decent reputation, a recent attempt by Nexos magazine to rate Mexico’s pollsters according to their accuracy gave Reforma a low-ish score.

Still, something is definitely stirring on the left. Virtually all polls now show that Mr López Obrador is in second place, and one or two others have suggested that the difference is down to single digits. That is not bad going for a candidate who until the beginning of this month was reckoned by nearly everyone to be in third. Where have the new votes come from?

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Poll Update: Peña Nieto 43.8%; AMLO 27.7%; Vázquez Mota 26% [In Spanish]

El Universal, 6/4/2012

According to the most recent poll from El Univeral/Buendía&Laredo carried out from May 24th – May 28th, Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI-PVEM) is still on the lead with 43.8% of effective voter preference, followed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD, PT and MC) with 27.7% and Josefina Vázquez Mota in third place with 26%.

The advantage of Peña Nieto, however, is now reduced to 16.1 percentage points. He was 24.8 percentage points ahead of López Obrador in the last poll.

This electoral shift occurred in the context of the #YoSoy132 movement.

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View complete poll results here.

The Week in Review: 6/4/2012

Katie Putnam and Eric L. Olson, The Mexico Institute’s Elections Guide, 6/4/2012

In a remarkable turn of events, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD) appears to dramatically narrow the gap with frontrunner Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI) in a new poll from Reforma newspaper. While other similarly credible polls put him much further back, it seems that the student protests and recent corruption scandals are benefitting the PRD candidate and may have hurt the PRI candidate.

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Clash between the PAN and Fox [In Spanish]

Reforma, 6/4/2012

Vicente Fox

Even though Fox had promised his “unconditional” support to Josefina Vázquez Mota in the presidential campaign, the former PAN president once more assured that Peña Nieto will win the election and called for his support.

“We should help the candidate who will win, it is clear at this moment who will be the winner and we should give our support so that we are able to solve problems,” stated Fox at his ranch in San Cristóbal, Guanajuato.

Fox also disqualified the Reforma poll that shows Peña Nieto with a four-point advantage over AMLO. He believes that the virtual tie is actually between Vázquez Mota and López Obrador.

In response, the PAN leader, Gustavo Madero, asked Fox not to betray democracy.

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