This Sunday about 12 million Mexicans are called to the polls to renew the governorships of the states of Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Aguascalientes, Tamaulipas and Durango, as well as 39 municipalities and 25 local deputies. The ruling Morena party aspires to consolidate its territorial power in this event, which it arrives at as a favorite in the polls, while its opposition rivals seek to take advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate that they can still stand up to the hegemonic movement led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ( AMLO).
Election day has started normally in all the states where there are positions at stake, except for Oaxaca, where the recent passage of Hurricane Agatha – which left 11 dead and 22 missing in the last week – has prevented the opening of 34 voting points that They were affected by road closures and flooding. The polls will remain open until 6:00 p.m. local time (one in the morning in Spain) and the quick count system is expected to return the first results tonight.
All the polls agree that Morena will win in Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Tamaulipas, which would allow her to consolidate her political dominance in two thirds of the country: they could govern in 21 of the 32 states. For its part, the opposition starts with an advantage in Aguascalientes and Durango, traditional conservative political strongholds that they must maintain if they want to prevent AMLO’s movement from continuing to dye the political map of Mexico red.
As Khemvirg Puentes, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), explains to EL MUNDO, the one who has the most to lose in this appointment is the ruling party: “because the expectations that it will win in most of the States, makes if it does not succeed, it is seen as a failure for the president who hopes to sweep any electoral process. So the surprise would be if the opposition maintained control of any of those entities.” Without hiding his enthusiasm at the possibility that his party will continue to reap victories, the optimistic López Obrador predicted the day before that: “we are going to continue winning the games by beating.”
The issues that have marked the electoral debate in most states have been violence, corruption and poverty. Another of the issues that has broken out in the middle of the campaign has been the war of leaked audio between the ruling party and the president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), ‘Alito’ Moreno, whom they accuse of allegedly having ordered the distribution of commissions and money laundering operations. The opposition leader denies all the accusations and denounces that the Government has launched a dirty war against him to distract attention on the eve of the election.
In spite of everything, Puentes considers that this confrontation will not have real consequences this Sunday: “I think it does not have a direct impact, it has more to do with a settling of scores. The population is not fully aware of the reality of the leaders of the party, so its effects would not be directly linked to the electoral result”. Despite the scandals, the unified opposition under the ‘Va por México’ formula continues to maintain good electoral prospects in Aguascalientes and Durango thanks “to the profile of the voter,” according to Puentes, “since they are territories with large urban areas and with schooling and higher socioeconomic income, which tends to lead to a more conservative vote, unlike Morena, which sweeps communities with lower incomes and educational levels.”
In June of next year, Mexicans will return to the polls to renew the governorships of Coahuila and the State of Mexico, in what will be the last electoral test before the 2024 presidential elections. AMLO is confident that his party will continue to reap good results to pay the best possible terrain so that his successor at the head of Morena has no problem renewing the Presidency and, in this way, his renewal project, baptized as the ‘Fourth Transformation’, ends up consolidating in Mexico.
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