In Mexico, campaign season beckons, and more than a year away from the 2024 national elections, the nature of the vote is already stained with controversy.

In February 2023, the highly popular left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known better among his supporters by his initials, AMLO, introduced a bill that would broadly weaken the Instituto Nacional Electoral (“National Electoral Institute''), or INE, Mexico’s federal body on electoral oversight. The bill tried to cut the salaries of many of the institute’s employees, softened penalties for candidates found violating electoral law, and slashed funding that the INE uses to train volunteers working at polling stations. The law soon garnered pushback from both the INE itself and ordinary Mexicans who saw the act as an overreach, resulting in tens of thousands protesting the budget slashing in Mexico City. Despite resistance to the measure, the President seems determined to sit atop the quickly opening field of suspected candidates for his replacement.

While no official campaigns have been launched with an official declaration to run, that has not stopped a number of well-known figures from publicly declaring their intent to run. In contrast to the hushed scheming of aspiring U.S. presidential candidates who all but tease the electorate with questionable hints of their possible candidacies, Mexican presidential candidates-to-be have boldly and daringly already begun putting their cards on the table in earnest. 

Of the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (“National Action Party''), or PAN, Santiago Creel, current President of the Chamber of Deputies, Mexico’s lower legislative chamber, said as early as June 2022 that he was “ready, determined, and convinced” to throw his hat into the ring as a candidate who could tie together a “broad alliance” to defeat those chosen candidates by the  incumbent left-wing, populist Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (“National Regeneration Movement''), otherwise known as Morena, AMLO’s party. More polemically, current PAN Senator Lilly Tellez declared around the same time that, if elected, she would “like nothing more than” overseeing the imprisonment of AMLO and his cabinet members. While championing a broad support base, the incumbent’s presidency, which began in 2018, has drawn markedly stark opposition from his enemies, who frequently criticize him as a demagogue. With a style of rule characterized by his hostility to journalists, increased police violence, and an earlier downplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic, Human Rights Watch would describe López Obrador in 2020 as being notedly similar to former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Joining PAN in the Va por México (figuratively “Going for Mexico”) coalition, which was formed in 2020 to contest the meteoric rise of Morena, the more centrist Partido Revolucionario Institucional (“Institutional Revolutionary Party”) appears to have thrown its support behind candidates such as former Tourism Secretary Enrique de la Madrid Cordero, or former Governor of the state of Tlaxcala, Beatriz Paredes Rangel, who has said she believes “-it is time for Mexico to have a woman President.” But the candidates receiving the most attention in Mexican media are undoubtedly those expected to be put forth by Morena.

At the forefront of the in-power left-wing party appear closely-AMLO-associated bona fides, including Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and Senator Ricardo Monreal, who have expressed their desires to succeed AMLO himself. However, challenging both of these men is a woman with a globe-spanning reputation in the scientific community.

Seen by many of Mexico’s Morena supporters as a sure-fire favorite, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, who is the current mayor of Mexico City, has already demonstrated to onlookers the widening boundaries of her support. In August 2022, the esteemed doctor of energy engineering, who has a Nobel Peace Prize under her belt, received a publicized unofficial endorsement for her candidacy from the Governor of Sonora. More importantly, however, Sheinbaum is known as a close confidant of the senior López Obrador. The two are seen as left-wing faces of the fight against neoliberalism, as the latter continues to conduct a broadly recognized populist mode of governance. Close as the two may be, Sheinbaum has signaled a few ways her governance as Mexican President would differ significantly from AMLO’s.

A devoted populist, AMLO’s presidency has seen efforts to maintain the growth of jobs in Mexico’s colossal oil industry, such as his personal opening of Mexico’s largest new oil refinery last July. Sheinbaum, who began her political career in 2000 as Mexico City’s Secretary of the Environment under AMLO, who was then mayor of the city at that time, has more publicly branded herself as an avid environmentalist. Sheinbaum stated in an interview that her belief in the need for renewable energy is “fundamental” to her operations as a politician. Mayor Sheinbaum has not openly criticized the current President but, ostensibly, could adopt radically different approaches to Mexican oil usage. The polls, however, spell for the doctor a possibly tenuous path to victory.

Following an accident on January 7, 2023, in the Mexico City metro, which killed at least one woman and injured dozens of others, the approval of Sheinbaum as Morena’s possible nominee appeared to falter. In a poll conducted by the Mexican newspaper El Financiero in February, a sample of 1,100 Mexican citizens illustrated a five-point drop in her rate of support from 46 percent in December to 41 percent, as her nearest competitor within Foreign Secretary Morena Ebrard appears to encroach narrowly on her position as a frontrunner. With plenty of time ahead, most polls still ultimately place her in the lead. Better yet, for her party at large, some polls suggest further that regardless of whichever candidate the left puts forward, it stands poised for a major victory next June. In the same recent poll by El Financiero, the same sample reported a commanding lead over the opposition parties by Morena. Seizing a strong plurality of those polled, the party came in hot at 45 percent, while the nearest contender, PAN, made out with just 18 percent of respondents. Even when more broadly pitted against the whole of the Va por México bloc, the Morena-led coalition still dominated the right by 13 points.

With more than a year between now and the election, Morena leadership and candidates, while now positioned to compete with one another, appear united in their endeavors to keep Mexico under the leadership of a left-wing anti-neoliberal President as the nation immerses itself further in the era of the Pink Tide.

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