Mexico May Soon Elect Its First Populist Leftist President in Recent Memory Andres Oppenheimer - Miami Herald
go to original May 11, 2017

Mexican 2018 presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador, leader of the National Regeneration Movement, MORENA, speaks during a rally at the Revolution Monument in Mexico City (Christian Palma/AP)

The race for Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections has drawn zero interest in the United States so far, but it should be in the headlines. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s fake claims about Mexico, the country may soon elect its first populist leftist president in recent memory.

The latest polls show that Trump’s Mexico-bashing has had the predictable effect of creating a nationalist backlash in Mexico, which is helping leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador climb steadily in the polls for the July 1, 2018, election.



According to a May 6 poll by BGC Associates and the daily Excelsior, López Obrador — a former Mexico City mayor — is leading the race with 26 percent of voters saying they would cast ballots for him, followed by center-right candidate Margarita Zavala with 21 percent, and ruling party hopeful Miguel Angel Osorio Chong with 19 percent.

But the most interesting part of the poll is a chart with Mexico’s voting trends over the past 12 months. It shows a steady rise by López Obrador and his Morena party, especially after the U.S. elections last November.

Trump’s false claims about an alleged upsurge in illegal immigration from Mexico — in fact, the number of undocumented Mexicans in the United States has fallen from 6.4 million in 2009 to 5.6 million in 2016, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center — and other untrue assertions about Mexico have given López Obrador the perfect ammunition to cast himself as the only one who can save Mexico from its aggressive northern neighbor.

Read the rest at Miami Herald

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Related: Rising Left-Wing Candidate AMLO Could Usher In Economic Uncertainty: Fitch Ratings (PanAm Post)

Related: Mexico's 2018 Election Is Shaping Up as a Vote for Economic Freedom from the U.S (Marketplace)

Related: Looking Back to the Anti-AMLO Political Discourse, His “Populism” Has Been Attacked in the Past (The News)

Related: What the Resistance to Trump Can Learn from Latin America (Global Voices)

Related: Can Andrés Manuel López Obrador and MORENA Unite the Mexican Left and Forge a Citizens’ Revolution Ahead of the 2018 Presidential Election? (NACLA)

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