(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s ruling Morena party is projected to expand its power further beyond President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s traditional southern strongholds in gubernatorial elections Sunday, winning four of six elections in states it doesn’t currently control.
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The election is a litmus test of Lopez Obrador’s support after three and a half years of rule, and of the strength of opposition parties, which have banded together against him by putting forward joint candidates. Since Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, officially founded the party in 2014, Morena and its allies have swept across the country, taking 18 of 32 state governorships.
Mexico’s economy hasn’t yet recovered the level when Lopez Obrador took power in December 2018 after being greatly affected by the pandemic, with the fifth-most Covid-19 deaths of any country. But the 68-year-old president remains widely popular, in part thanks to his anti-corruption agenda and social programs that give working-class Mexicans monthly cash transfers.
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Morena’s strong polling numbers “reflect to a very significant extent the enduring popularity of President Lopez Obrador, his long political coattails, and the impact of the social programs created by the administration,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief Latin America economist Alberto Ramos wrote in a note before Sunday’s vote.
Polls show Morena comfortably taking central Hidalgo and southern Oaxaca from the center-right Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, and southeastern Quintana Roo from the left-wing PRD party. It leads by a tight margin in Tamaulipas, in the country’s northeast, while northern Durango is a toss-up against a PRI candidate backed by two other opposition parties. The conservative National Action Party, known as the PAN, is expected to keep hold of central Aguascalientes.
A strong Morena performance would put it in a favorable position to win the presidency again in 2024, when Lopez Obrador steps down after his single six-year term. It could also spell the end of state control by the PRI, which governed Mexico for decades of one-party rule until 2000, Eurasia Group wrote this week. If the PRI doesn’t win any of the votes, it will hold just two local states — both of which are up for grabs next year.
“It is possible that the PRI, the party that ruled for over 70 years and came back to power in 2012 under President Pena Nieto, is reduced to one or zero states next year,” Eurasia wrote in the note.
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