Win By MORENA's Mexico State Governor Candidate Could Be Key to Presidential Race Dave Graham - Reuters
go to original April 26, 2017

MORENA's Delfina Gomez and Lopez Obrador (La Jornada)

Mexico's ruling party could be defeated by the candidate of leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a June state election seen as a litmus test for next year's presidential race, a newspaper poll showed on Tuesday.

On June 4, voters will choose a new governor in the State of Mexico. The most populous state in the country, it is a bastion of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which won by a landslide in the last election in 2011.

However, the poll by daily Reforma showed Delfina Gomez of Lopez Obrador's party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), holding a wafer-thin lead over PRI rival Alfredo del Mazo, a cousin of Pena Nieto.

The survey of 1,000 voters showed 29 percent backing Gomez and 28 percent del Mazo, with 22 percent favoring Josefina Vazquez Mota, a former presidential candidate for the center-right opposition National Action Party, or PAN.

A March poll by Reforma had shown del Mazo with a one-point lead over Gomez in the state, where the PRI has held power since the party's inception.

The loss of the 16-million-strong State of Mexico and its financial resources would be a major blow to the PRI in its bid to stop Lopez Obrador from winning the presidency next year.

Read the rest at Reuters

Related: Video of Mexican Lawmaker Taking Money for Lopez Obrador Sparks Controversy (Latin American Herald Tribune)

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