Mexico’s Electoral Campaigns Kick Off Plus Latin America’s Resilient Democracies

Mexico’s electoral campaigns officially begin with AMLO’s legacy at play. The official campaign period for Mexico’s June 2 general election kicks off Friday, March 1. Claudia Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez will have three months to convince voters that they should be the next president. While the ruling party’s Sheinbaum leads her opposition coalition rival Gálvez by over twenty percentage points in most polls, some report the gap has shrunk since October.

Sheinbaum’s lead reflects her deep loyalty to perennially popular President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). He in turn uses his daily press conferences and control over state resources to support her bid, laying out an expanded 2024 budget and an ambitious legislative agenda that includes twenty proposed constitutional and legal reforms. Meanwhile, Gálvez’s campaign so far has suffered from a fractious political coalition, limited access to the media, and a fragmented communication strategy, often preaching to the already converted rather than the AMLO supporter still looking for some change.

The opposition does have issues to run on. Murders reached record levels under AMLO’s watch, part of why over half of all voters cite crime as their top concern. Slow economic growth means per capita incomes are lower than when AMLO started. Access to basic medicines, doctors, and quality schools deteriorated, too. And recent revelations of U.S. inquiries (since-closed) into millions of dollars of campaign and government financing from drug cartels raise questions about AMLO’s anti-corruption assurances.

If June 2 becomes a referendum on AMLO, then Sheinbaum will take office on October 1. Yet if it instead becomes a discussion of who is best equipped to lead the nation forward, Gálvez may have a shot, especially among the nearly sixteen million Mexicans eligible to cast their first presidential vote.

Latin America’s democracies are challenged but resilient. Latin America and the Caribbean declined for the eighth consecutive year in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU’s) Democracy Index 2023, with two-thirds of the region’s countries falling in the index rankings. Central America was the big loser, driven by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s power grabs combined with high levels of criminal violence, as well as by Guatemalan politicians’ efforts to prevent democratically elected President Bernardo Arévalo from taking office. Chile dropped from the “full democracy” category to the “flawed democracy” category because of a perceived decline in the country’s democratic political culture due to an “increased preference for expert rule.” Brazil was also categorized as a “flawed democracy” due to perceived declines in political participation and civil liberties. 

In both of these cases, democracy has been put to the test. In Chile, citizens voted twice to replace the constitution, and twice rejected documents perceived to be too radical. Across the spectrum, Chileans peacefully accepted both results. All three branches of Brazil’s government stood up for democracy when former President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters ransacked the congress, presidential palace, and supreme court. And despite lower per capita incomes, greater inequalities, significant violence, and weaker rule of law, Latin America and the Caribbean ranks as one of the world’s most democratic regions, behind much wealthier North America and Western Europe.