Mexican Elections 2017-18

[RodPresident]

MXN rose after falling 1.2% yesterday as AMLO's campaign chief worked to calm investors anxious about some of his promises.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-14/mexico-s-obrador-will-work-to-calm-markets-campaign-chief-says

What is interesting is AMLO's campaign chief is Tatiana Clouthier who is a member of a key PAN family.  She is the daughter of the 1988 PAN candidate.  She broke with PAN years ago and is no with AMLO.  Her brother ran and won as a PAN rebel for the lower house in 2015 for Sinaloa and is now running as a PAN rebel for Sinaloa Senate.

Does AMLO have more in common with "El Maquío" than with Cuáuthemoc Cárdenas?

[jaichind]

Reforma poll for NL (which is El Bronco's home state) Prez race

AMLO (MORENA-PT-PES)       29%
Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC)           30%
Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL)     19%
El Bronco                              6%



NL is the second weakest state for MORENA in the 2015 Legislative elections (it got 2.6% in 2015).  For  AMLO to be neck-to-neck for first place shows the strength of AMLO this time around.  It seems even here the logic of tactical voting is coming into play for El Bronco who is down to 6% in his home state.

[jaichind]

Mexico’s Gaping Deficit Shows Signs of Election-Year Splurge

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-19/mexico-s-gaping-deficit-shows-signs-of-election-year-splurge

Now that it is out of reach for PRI to win the PRI is stepping up social spending to save down-ballot races and will leave a worse fiscal situation for AMLO to take over.

[jaichind]

Exotix analyst Rafael Elias wrote a report saying that AMLO may become the most powerful president since the 1990s as the MORENA bloc will most likely capture an absolute majority in both houses.  He said the market is not taking that into the account and that if MORENA bloc wins a majority then MXN which is currently trading at around 20.5 will fall to 22 election day and to around 25-27 by years end if it seems that AMLO will have the power to enact radical policies.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

How loyal will the non Morena parties (especially the Christians) be to him if he gets in power?

[jaichind]

How loyal will the non Morena parties (especially the Christians) be to him if he gets in power?

My impression is that AMLO hand-picked the PT and PES candidates so they will be beholden to him.  In Mexico it seems a lot of times the local Governor have a lot of control of the members of the Federal legislature regardless of party ID. So AMLO's goal over the next couple of years once he wins will have to be to capture as many governorships through hook or crook as possible. 

[jaichind]

DE LAS HERAS-DEMOTECNIA projection has AMLO at 50%

AMLO (MORENA-PT-PES)       50%
Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC)           25%
Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL)     19%
El Bronco                              5%



I suspect AMLO at this stage is over-polling and Meade is under-polling.  Most likely AMLO will not cross  50% of effective vote and there is a solid chance Meade finishes ahead of Anaya.

[Hash]

Because of my interests and my own experience working in a public school in Mexico, I paid attention to their comments on education (and, even more specifically, whatever they said about English classes), and I can certify that none of them have any idea what they're talking about (except, maybe, Anaya, who kind of spoke some sense for once). AMLO's 'views' on education are particularly horrifying, especially since it's pretty clear he has no idea what he's talking about and buys into claims that the education reform is some sort of sordid neoliberal plot imposed by the IMF (when in reality the education reform is a whole bunch of nothing which had good intentions on paper but has amounted to jack squat in practice).

How interesting.  Any thoughts from you on the education reform EPN put in place? SNTE is up in arms over that and it seems is backing their ancient enemy AMLO just to overturn it.  Do you think AMLO will overturn those reforms if and when he gets into office ?

I think that the education reform began with good intentions and most of its elements are, on paper  and in theory, good ideas - open to some debate, but generally going in the right direction. However, it was poorly implemented both in the secondary legislation and on the ground, and its shortcomings have become more obvious.

Given how it used to work beforehand, the creation of 'professional teaching service' (as a regulated public sector career) and the idea of independent, mandatory teacher evaluations to control and determine hiring, promotions, continuation of employment and to provide incentives and recognition was a good idea and long overdue. The other parts of the reform -- matters like school autonomy, technical assistance to schools and teachers, new funding programs to improve infrastructure or IT access -- were also good idea, if only in theory.

I think there are fair criticisms to be made about the virtues of evaluating teaching solely by arbitrary and impersonal numbers, statistics and tests -- and that may be one of the main defects of the evaluation system as implemented by the law. In a country with such massive inequalities in educational coverage, quality, achievements and with vastly different regional realities, not adequately taking into account the specific context of each specific school (and I mean schools, not just 'states' or 'municipalities') was a mistake (I know the law makes passing mention of context being objectively considered). It becomes obvious that the reform was designed by technocrats who don't understand realities on the ground, and who quickly became more preoccupied with churning out numbers and indicators for their databases than making sure the education reform actually fulfilled its stated objective, improving the quality of education - which it hasn't done. Indeed, even as the implementation has clearly failed badly and the reform has turned into a wet pizza with every passing day, the federal government has desperately tried to keep putting a positive spin on it, using misleading or incomplete numbers and statistics to paint a positive image of what isn't all that positive.

Some of the left and AMLO's criticisms against the reform are valid, particularly the idea that it imposes a one-size-fits-all reform model across the board without considering regional differences or specific contexts, but a lot of those criticisms are crowded out by yelling 'neoliberalism', IMF or OECD very loudly without bothering to explain exactly how it is neoliberal (or why that may be bad) and never proposing acceptable alternatives. The claim made by opponents that they don't disagree with evaluations but don't want them to determine teacher dismissal is a bit disingenuous - since that is a return to the old system, and I think most schools and workplaces would laugh at you if you told them "I agree with being evaluated, but only if I can't be fired even if I'm incompetent!".

I don't like to make claims or generalizations on the basis of personal, perhaps anecdotal, evidence, but it's clear to me that some teachers are incompetent, poorly trained, bad at their job, lazy or uninterested/careless. Stuff like ringing the bell early everyday (which is breaking federal law), leaving entire classrooms unattended to share some lunch in a teacher's lounge, educational authorities arbitrarily deciding on long weekends and days off from the federal calendar or even charging students to write a test (banned by the reform) are, in my experience or that of others, still quite common. Shoddy, minimal infrastructure built in a rush is very common in certain parts - and I worked in a relatively well-off state in a suburban area which wasn't extremely poor, so states like Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas have it even worse.

AMLO's claim that the reform was more of a labour reform than an education reform has some validity to it as well: it didn't really touch on the quality or suitability of education, teaching methods, curriculum etc. (at least initially) besides just "evaluate the teachers and fire the sh**tty ones". Mexico's education system - at least in primary schools - is based heavily on robotic memorization, repetition, copying and rote learning with extremely little room for independent learning, development of critical thinking capabilities, attention for students with learning difficulties or even much regard for whether the students actually learned anything while copying stuff down. The reform didn't do anything to change that. A new curriculum has been adopted (and is to be implemented, apparently) after the SEP made a big show about it (the 'New Education Model'). I'm not a pedagogue or even all that well-informed about education, but I took a look at the English curriculum of the 'New Education Model' which I imagine will replace the current program (adopted under Calderón, I think). Unfortunately, from a quick look at it, they haven't learned their lesson (probably didn't bother): the curriculum is still an unrealistic and largely inapplicable bunch of fancy words and jargon largely lifted from the EU's common framework on languages. The current program is an unrealistic and unworkable pile of nonsense which was a nightmare to teach from -- it makes Mexico's technocrats and other geniuses look good, able to peddle garbage like "Mexico's education system is a model for the 21st century" (I think then-education secretary Aurelio Nuño, who is now on Meade's campaign instead of finishing his job, said something like that), while not working in practice (and nobody cares).

Mexico's education system has made lots of progress over the past 18-20 years, notably in terms of coverage and increasing graduation/completion rates, but still has lots of distance to cover, both in terms of matching HS graduation rates of other OECD countries and massively improving on the quality of the education.

It is the dissident CNTE (based primarily in Oaxaca) which has been leading the rowdy opposition to the reform since 2013. The leadership of the SNTE, after Elba Esther Gordillo was turfed out in pure Salinas style by EPN, has remained with the government and 'favourable', in theory, to the reform, which has meant that the government has agreed to water down the reform and stuff like evaluation so as to keep the SNTE's leadership and most of their largely membership content. There are dissident factions of the SNTE, mostly La Maestra loyalists (her relatives), who are supporting AMLO and opposed to the reform. The CNTE isn't officially supporting AMLO, and has criticized his proposals on 'cancelling' the education reform, but AMLO's opponents have all accused him of being sympathetic to the CNTE. It isn't very clear what AMLO will actually do about it, since 'cancelling' it would mean repealing or amending laws and perhaps relevant sections of the constitution.

[Hash]

Reforma poll in Puebla:

Martha Erika Alonso (PAN-PRD-MC) 41%
Miguel Barbosa (Morena-PT-PES) 38%
Enrique Doger (PRI) 18%
Michel Chaín (PVEM) 3%

In the presidential election in the state, AMLO has 52% against 27% for Anaya and 17% for Meade.

Barbosa's problem is that, as a known quantity and a longtime politician who doesn't have a particularly impressive or productive career, he isn't all that popular -- he leads on negative attributes, while his opponent leads on positive attributes. While most voters, according to the poll, want a change of government in the state and disagree with the ex-governor's wife running, the incumbent governor is not unpopular (tied 44-44 approval) and Moreno Valle's record gets 44-50 approval. But AMLO's massive lead and Morena's big advantage in the 'generic state congressional ballot' may help put Barbosa over the top...

[jaichind]

El Pias aggregate curve of polls and projection for Lower House seats

[jaichind]

The PAN-PRD-MC alliances is having a lot of defections.  Some of this are old new but it seems that President of the Senate who is from PAN said he will back Meade.   And the PAN governors of Baja California Sur and  Aguascalientes have pretty much broken with Anaya and said that Aanya cannot win and that PAN has to start from scratch after the elections that Anaya has led PAN to disaster.  Both seems to lean Meade without saying so.  PRD governor of Michoacán also has came out for Meade.   And the PRD governor of Morelos and the PRD-PSD governor candidate for Morelos (running separately from PAN-MC) has endorsed AMLO even as he is still running against the MORENA-PT-PES candidate

[Hash]

The PAN-PRD-MC alliances is having a lot of defections.  Some of this are old new but it seems that President of the Senate who is from PAN said he will back Meade.   And the PAN governors of Baja California Sur and  Aguascalientes have pretty much broken with Anaya and said that Aanya cannot win and that PAN has to start from scratch after the elections that Anaya has led PAN to disaster.  Both seems to lean Meade without saying so.  PRD governor of Michoacán also has came out for Meade.   And the PRD governor of Morelos and the PRD-PSD governor candidate for Morelos (running separately from PAN-MC) has endorsed AMLO even as he is still running against the MORENA-PT-PES candidate

The President of the Senate, Ernesto Cordero, was elected in September 2017 following some underhanded funny business with the PRI. Taking advantage of the PAN's internal divisions, the PRI agreed to cede the presidency of the Senate for the final year to the PAN, on condition that it be a less anti-priista panista like Cordero, who had already criticized in pretty strong terms Ricardo Anaya. Cordero was therefore elected president of the Senate by the PRI-PVEM, and four other dissident PAN senators, while the majority of the PAN caucus, led by its coordinator, senator Fernando Herrera, angrily denounced the 'traitors', refusing to recognize Cordero's election. Nevertheless, Cordero is still in the PAN caucus and internal procedures to expel him are dragging along very slowly, which suggests to me that everyone is waiting until the election before shooting off the fireworks at one another.

Cordero is an old calderonista, who was twice cabinet secretary under Calderón and was Calderón's unlucky favourite in the PAN's 2012 presidential primary. He supported Zavala's candidacy for a time, but is now openly supporting Meade: after all they're former ITAM classmates. Adding insult to injury, Cordero also formally denounced Anaya for the money laundering scandal before the PGR.

Besides Cordero, ex-PAN senator Javier Lozano (who used to be close to Moreno Valle but is now distanced from him) has been a senior member of Meade's campaign for a few months and the other 'Rebeldes del PAN' senators who starred in the party's mini-crisis last year are focusing most of their energies in going after Anaya and implicitly or explicitly supporting Meade. However, the vast majority of the PAN's caucuses in both houses remained oficialista, loyal to Anaya (at least until next Sunday).

Most of the PAN's governors have never been particularly close to Anaya - many were seen as closer to Calderón/Zavala or Moreno Valle, or in a group of their own. It also doesn't help that Anaya, on his way to the top, has tripped up and betrayed an innumerable amount of people who aren't exactly rushing to his side in his time of greatest need. Granted, in some cases, for the sake of partisan unity in an electoral moment, he has patched up old wounds with some people, like his former ally and mentor Gustavo Madero (who a few months ago was pretty pissed off with Anaya because of the PAN's pluri list for Senate). Given that, with the election basically over, Anaya's defeat seems inevitable, it's no surprise that the governors and other senior party elected officials are already preparing the inevitable post-electoral internal warfare.

The PAN governor of BCS, Carlos Mendoza Davis, claims to have made his peace with Anaya has publicly appeared with him at an event, but most are suspicious because he's good friends with Meade. But the damage was already done. The PAN governors of Durango (José Rosas Aispuro) and Aguascalientes (Martín Orozco) seem to be on a similar strategy: publicly appearing to support Anaya, but having in the past criticized him or spoken preemptively about the post-electoral scenario. In any case, Mendoza, Orozco and Rosas Aispuro were closer to Calderón's group. The PAN governor of Querétaro, Francisco Domínguez, has publicly given his support to Anaya, but it's obvious that there's no love lost between the two, who have long been political rivals.

When Anaya registered his candidacy in March, he was accompanied by only 6 of the PAN-PRD's 16 governors - Miguel Márquez (Guanajuato), Francisco Kiko Vega (Baja California), Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca (Tamaulipas), Antonio Echeverría (Nayarit), Miguel Ángel Mancera (CDMX) and Arturo Núñez (Tabasco). PAN governors Miguel Ángel Yunes (Veracruz), José Rosas Aispuro (Durango), Francisco Domínguez (Querétaro), Carlos Mendoza (BCS), Martín Orozco (Aguascalientes), Tony Gali (Puebla) and Javier Corral (Chihuahua) didn't show up, although most did send 'messages of support'.

Yunes is a group of his own, and obtained what he wanted from Anaya (a gubernatorial candidacy for his son), which has been his natural priority in this election. Given Corral's public feud with the federal government and the PRI a few months ago, he could have been expected to back up Anaya amidst his own travails with the PRI, but Corral was also pissed off with Anaya because of the PAN's senatorial pluri candidates. They have since made up. Rafael Moreno Valle got what he wanted out of Anaya (his wife's candidacy and his own pluri candidacy), and he has clearly turned his attention to what matters more for him - his wife's victory in the short-term and seizing control of the party in the long-term, eyeing 2024.

From the PRD's side, Mancera was convinced to drop his own presidential candidacy (in exchange for a Senate pluri candidacy) and has joined Anaya's campaign, actively promoting the idea of a coalition government. Last year, both Graco Ramírez and Silvano Aureoles briefly toyed around with the idea of their own vanity presidential candidacies, and neither appear to be too happy about having been forced to bow out (moreover, in Graco Ramírez's case, the PAN refused his stepson's gubernatorial candidacy). The PAN-PRD governor of QRoo, Carlos Joaquín González, criticized Anaya last year and has certainly not devoted much time or energy to supporting him now -- but he's a former priista (the half-brother of Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, former governor and current energy secretary), who left the PRI because of an internal succession conflict in 2016, but doesn't really seem to have any real beef with the federal government.

I think the Frente was poorly conceived, poorly marketed and poorly portrayed from the very beginning. Instead of being some sort of broad, civic, democratic coalition united by some common policy goals and altruistic objective, no matter how vague (change), from the get-go it was portrayed and even conceived as a wobbly, desperate political deal between weakened parties who were desperate to win and felt that they could only do so in some sort of coalition, no matter how incoherent. It very quickly got bogged down, losing precious time, with internal divisions and horsetrading over the presidential candidacy, which caused a fairly nasty crisis within the PAN and public disagreements between the PAN and PRD, resolved only at the last minute amidst rumours that everything was about to collapse. Initially branded as a 'civic front', it quickly became obvious that 'citizens' were not to have their say in all this (granted, 'citizens' didn't have their say in any of the other candidacies): Anaya, like a panista Roberto Madrazo, was only interested in his own presidential candidacy, regardless of the costs or how many people he stepped on. Without primaries or any sort of democratic mechanism, Anaya was basically 'selected' by himself as the PAN's candidate, following deals with Moreno Valle and others, and accepted by the PRD-MC following deals with them. I don't think it gave a very good look for what was supposed to be a broad, democratic coalition surpassing old partisan divisions.

[jaichind]

Final Mitofsky poll - change relative to May in terms of effective vote since we are getting close to election day

AMLO (MORENA-PT-PES)       48.1 (+0.3)
Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC)           25.5 (-0.6)
Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL)    22.5 (+0.5)
El Bronco                              3.9 (-0.2)

Not much change but Meade continues to close the gap between himself and Anaya.

[jaichind]

Last GEA/ISA poll has AMLO keeping his lead with Meade quickly catching up with Anaya.  Change is from May survey

AMLO (MORENA-PT-PES)       44 (-2)
Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC)           28 (-1)
Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL)     26 (+5)
El Bronco                               2 (-2)

Which seems to ft the narrative that it is Meade that has the momentum in the last couple weeks before the election.  That pretty much kills any last minute Meade->Anaya tactical voting and implies that Meade could come in second.

[jaichind]

Bloomberg poll tracker that calculates effective vote based on various polls.  Below is what they have currently and what they have end of each month in 2018

                  AMLO       Anaya      Meade     El Bronco      Zavala
Jun 20th       46.3         26.5        24.7         2.9
May 31th      51.0         25.4        20.5         3.4
Apr 30th       48.0         29.8        17.0         2.3             2.9
Mar 30th       45.4        26.9         19.5        0.4              8.2
Feb 27th       39.0        29.6         24.1         2.6             4.3
Jan 31st        38.5        27.6        22.7         1.9             6.0

It seems Zavala dropping out of the race boosted Anaya a bit and if any thing helped AMLO and El Bronco more.  And even after some bump in support from Zavala dropping, Aanay's support  dropped off after that.  Since March the AMLO-Aanaya gap has been pretty stead at 20% except for a surge in May to 25%.

It seems the last month of the election has seen Anaya stagnate and some pro-AMLO PRI voters coming home to Meade.

[Hash]

Gubernatorial candidates in Chiapas:

Rutilio Escandón (Morena-PT-PES): Morena's candidate, handpicked by AMLO, was president of the state supreme court until last year. A former priista, he was a PRD first minority senator (2000-2006) and PRD federal deputy (2006-2009), but distanced himself from the PRD in 2012 and, as president of the state's judiciary, has been close to governor Manuel Velasco. Given that Escandón has little electoral experience and lacks a political structure of his own, his imposition as Morena's gubernatorial candidate and his strength as apparent frontrunner owe to factors other than himself -- like, for example, Velasco's duplicitous underhanded support... Indeed, Morena's candidates in Chiapas are a real who's-who of the state PVEM: Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, former president of the state PVEM and state deputy (until just a few weeks ago seeking the PRI-PVEM's gubernatorial candidacy), is now Morena's first candidate for Senate (Morena's second candidate for Senate is a former PVEM federal deputy).

Roberto Albores Gleason (PRI-Panal): The PRI's candidate, imposed by the PRI/Los Pinos, is senator Roberto Albores Gleason, the son of former interim governor Roberto Albores Guillén (1998-2000). His father broke with the PRI and supported the PRD's gubernatorial candidate, incompetent drunk crook Juan Sabines Guerrero, in 2006, which got his son a job in the new governor's administration before being elected federal deputy in 2009. Albores Gleason's candidacy was opposed by local factions in the PRI, but imposed from above, and was also seen as unacceptable to much of the local PVEM (as I discussed in an earlier post). Given how the PRI is now quite weak in the state since 2012-2015, with the PVEM bolting from the coalition, Albores Gleason should probably be expected to perform quite poorly. Paradoxically, he is now said to be the only candidate who isn't in one way or another backed or favoured by governor Manuel Velasco, and has stepped up his attacks against the incumbent governor recently.

José Antonio Aguilar Bodegas (PAN-PRD-MC): The Frente's candidate resigned from the PRI in December 2017, after four decades as a priista. Aguilar Bodegas is a former PRI federal deputy (1997-2000) and senator (2000-2006). He was the PRI-PVEM's gubernatorial candidate in 2006, narrowly losing - by less than 1% - to the PRD's candidate, Juan Sabines Guerrero, and thereafter decrying (à la AMLO, ironically) fraud. Aguilar's 2006 candidacy was betrayed by Albores Guillén (see above) and his opponent benefited from the active support of outgoing governor Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía (who was in turn later betrayed and ed over by Sabines). He was a state cabinet secretary under Velasco until last fall. He resigned from the PRI in December 2017, opposing the imposition of Albores Gleason. He was acclaimed as the PAN-PRD-MC's candidate, although this wasn't to everyone's liking (particularly MC owner Dante Delgado, who supported María Elena Orantes López, the PRD-PT-MC's 2012 gubernatorial candidate and former PRI senator). The state prosecutor's office has opened a corruption investigation against him, the real motives for which are unclear (with rumours of a 'pact' between Velasco and Dante Delgado, or because the state attorney general - elected PVEM federal deputy in 2012 but never serving - has state AG since 2009, under Aguilar Bodegas' enemy Sabines).

Fernando Castellanos (PVEM-local satellites): As I discussed in a post a few pages back, after some dizzying back-and-forth and contradictory plot twists worthy of a telenovela, the PVEM finally abandoned its coalition with the PRI and registered its own candidate, Fernando Castellanos Cal y Mayor, mayor (on leave) of the state capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, since 2015. There was some legal controversy about his candidacy, with the state electoral institute originally denying his candidacy claiming that he hadn't resigned his office 120 days before the election, but the state electoral tribunal overturned the decision and its verdict in Castellanos' favour was upheld earlier this month by the TEPJF. There is confusion about what purpose Castellanos' candidacy serves: some versions claim that he is only a tool used to attack Albores Gleason and therefore ensure Rutilio Escandón's victory, while other versions claim that his candidacy has changed the situation and activated PVEM machines in his favour (in public, he claims to have made up a lot of ground and be roughly tied for first, confident of victory on Sunday). A lot of PVEM members and cadres in Chiapas are openly supporting AMLO -- although Castellanos himself has personally denied that he is supporting AMLO -- and promoting the voto cruzado (vote splitting) between AMLO for president and the PVEM for local/gubernatorial races.

Jesús Alejo Orantes Ruiz 'Chus Orantes' (Independent): 'Chus Orantes', a crazy hick with a cowboy hat, is a sugarcane producer/peasant leader and former PRI state deputy from the municipality of Venustiano Carranza. He is the son of the late infamous Carmen Orantes Alegría, a local cacique who was said to have had over 100 children and who illegally appropriated huge tracts of land in the region. His father was also accused of assassinating local peasant leaders and political opponents. 'Chus Orantes' is a paternalistic populist demagogue who 'gave up' his entire salary as state deputy to give to the poor and donated tracts of his land to poor local families. His candidacy received the support of the most famous crazy cowboy of them all, 'El Bronco'.

[Republican Left]

Does anyone have any information or perspectives on the Social Encounter Party, from what I understand it's a religiously conservative party (Evangelical) that's aligned with AMLO's coalition. If I understand correctly, PES is trying to ride on their cotails while AMLO accepted them in order to gain broad-based appeal, is that accurate?

Who do you think would be the best President for Mexico? And which parties should win the most seats?

[Hash]

Does anyone have any information or perspectives on the Social Encounter Party, from what I understand it's a religiously conservative party (Evangelical) that's aligned with AMLO's coalition. If I understand correctly, PES is trying to ride on their cotails while AMLO accepted them in order to gain broad-based appeal, is that accurate?

Who do you think would be the best President for Mexico? And which parties should win the most seats?

PES is, at least in theory, a Christian evangelical party, founded and led by Hugo Eric Flores, a former evangelical pastor from Baja California in the 'Casa sobre la Roca' church. 'Casa sobre la Roca' is a rather shady neo-Pentecostal church/scam (it is actually registered as an 'asociación civil', rather than religious association), owned by Alejandro and Rosi Orozco, who have made a fortune in public contracts with their businesses and foundations 'against human trafficking'.

Flores is a political opportunist who has worked for all sides: a former priista who allied with Calderón in 2006 and, in exchange, getting a patronage appointment in SEMARNAT -- although he was dismissed a year later, accused of modifying official documents and other misconduct. He later worked in the administration of Marcelo Ebrard, the PRD head of government of the DF. The PES was first recognized as a state party in Baja California in 2006, and has been a federal party since 2014.

The other part of the story is that the party was founded under the auspices of the 'Hidalgo Group', a shrewd and influential regional factional grouping in the PRI led by former interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong and former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam. The PES' former secretary general and lower house coordinator, Alejandro González Murillo, a wealthy construction businessman, is Jesús Murillo Karam's nephew; the party's state president in Hidalgo used to be Natividad Castrejón Valdez, a former PAN and PRD political operator who went to work with Osorio Chong in the SEGOB; the PES mayor of Huejutla in Hidalgo is Raúl Badillo Ramírez, the brother of a former PRI federal deputy whose family is described as the priista caciques of the Huasteca hidalguense region. In 2015, Hidalgo was the PES' best state, with 9.4% - nearly finishing third ahead of the PRD (without such support, it might not have saved its new registry). By Flores' own admission in November 2017, Osorio Chong is a 'friend' of the party. Now, Osorio Chong is a PRI 'pluri' candidate for Senate and publicly supports Meade, but he was passed over by the 'dedazo' and one version of the PES' alliance with Morena is that it is part of Osorio Chong's underhanded 'revenge' (and it is always useful to have friends in different places). However, another version claims that the PES genuinely distanced itself from the PRI, probably because the PRI largely ignored them and did not reward them in kind for their critical support in the Edomex eleciton last year. In Congress, the PES had, more often than not, voted with the PRI-PVEM-Panal, until they broke with them, because, Flores claims, the PRI didn't keep their word and support their 'legislative agenda'. Alejandro González Murillo has also left the party, protesting the alliance with Morena (and is instead running for Panal).

The PES' alliance with AMLO was a bit of a surprise -- not so much because they're right-wing socially conservative evangelicals, but rather because the party had been sending mixed signals and Flores had criticized AMLO in the past -- but, basically admitting their opportunism, Flores said that he wanted to be "on the right side of history". Like every other minor party in Mexico, the PES' true raison-d'être and ultimate objective above all else is now to keep its lucrative legal registration as a federal political party, by selling itself to the highest bidder, and the alliance with Morena (and PT, another scam) is a fantastic way not only to keep its registry but significantly increase its influence. I don't know enough about their candidates, but they do seem to be accepting anyone willing to don the party label without much regard for their evangelical or social conservative credentials -- most notably 'Cuau' in Morelos or disastrous former priista governor (and friend of the narcos) Fausto Vallejo in Morelia (Michoacán) after Morena rejected him. Their top 'pluri' candidate for Senate is Adriana Sarur, a PVEM federal deputy (the PVEM, of course, the eternal paragon of moral and ethics in politics) Moreover, the PES has also signalled that it wouldn't join common parliamentary blocs with Morena-PT in either house of Congress after the elections, calling their alliance an 'electoral alliance', which basically further confirms what I've said.

As for their ideology, the PES denies being a 'religious party' but Flores has a very strange understanding of 'secularism' or 'secular state'. The little it offers in the way of a coherent declaration of principles mostly consists of meaningless fluff, with a particular emphasis on the theme of 'families' which reveals their socially conservative orientation. The PES and its legislators are strongly opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage or LGBT rights in general -- which has been cause for concern and dismay among AMLO's more left-wing progressive followers, like Elena Poniatowska, but at the end of the day AMLO has never actually given a shit about any of these issues and won't do anything to favour them (PES or no PES). In this election, AMLO has shown that he really doesn't care who allies with him, or even their interests in doing so. The PES isn't even his most reproachable alliance.

I would still hesitate to call PES an 'evangelical party'. According to an article in Reporte Indigo, the head of the largest evangelical federation in Mexico says that the PES doesn't represent even 1% of evangelicals and has nothing to do with Christian evangelical politics. It is unclear how deep the PES' ties with specific evangelical churches run, and there do not appear to be any direct links between specific evangelical churches and PES leaders/officials, unlike with most other evangelical parties in Latin America. In its demeanour and behaviour, it has much more in common with other minor parties in Mexico than with, say, Don Fabricio's PRN in Costa Rica or MIRA in Colombia.

[Republican Left]

Oh ****, so basically it's another satellite party like PVEM (this time with religious overtones that serve as veneer). That was dark but probably good to know if I was a voter in Mexico.

Does this mean PAN is basically the true party for socially conservative and religious voters? Is there a rift between Evangelical and Catholic PAN voters or is the former too small to make a decisive impact at the moment? Hash, do you have any preferences yourself for Mexico?

[jaichind]

On the topic of Chiapas PVEM gubernatorial candidate Fernando Castellanos not openly coming out for AMLO, it seems Chiapas PVEM satellite party PMC (Podemos Mover a Chiapas) has come out in favor of AMLO.

[jaichind]

Final Refoma poll has AMLO above 50%

AMLO (MORENA-PT-PES)       51 (-1)
Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC)           27(+1)
Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL)     19
El Bronco                              3

Party support for Lower Hosue

MORENA     37 (-5)
PAN            21 (+1)
PRI             18  
MC               5 (+1)
PRD             4 (-1)
PT               4 (+1)
PVEM           4 (+1)
PANAL          2
PES              2 (+1)

By alliance then it is
MORENA-PT-PES    43 (-3)
PAN-PRD-MC         30 (+1)
PRI-PVEM-PANAL   24 (+1)

[jaichind]

Final El Financiero poll also has AMLO above 50% but with Aanya behind Meade for second

AMLO (MORENA-PT-PES)       54
Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL)     22
Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC)           21
El Bronco                              3


Party support for Lower House

MORENA    45
PRI            20
PAN           20
PRD            4
PVEM          3
PT              3
MC             3
PANAL        1
PES            1

By alliance then it is
MORENA-PT-PES    49
PAN-PRD-MC         27
PRI-PVEM-PANAL   24

with PANAL and PES under threat of going under the 3% threshold to survive as a party

[Hash]

Further proof that some PAN governors are dropping Anaya and covering their asses for the future: 7 of 12 PAN governors have signed a document published in Excélsior in which, under lots of fluff and verbosity, they are saying that they'll work with the next government 'for the good of the country'. Ricardo Anaya's name, or that of any other candidate, isn't mentioned. Some of the governors who signed have denied that they're supporting another candidate and reiterated their support for the Frente... but anyone can say anything on Twitter.

The governors who signed are:
Martín Orozco Sandoval (Aguascalientes)
Carlos Mendoza Davis (Baja California Sur)
José Rosas Aispuro (Durango)
José Antonio Gali Fayad (Puebla)
Francisco Domínguez Servién (Querétaro)
Carlos Joaquín González (Quintana Roo)
Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca (Tamaulipas)

Those who didn't sign are:
Francisco Vega (Baja California)
Javier Corral (Chihuahua)
Miguel Márquez (Guanajuato)
Antonio Echevarría (Nayarit)
Miguel Ángel Yunes (Veracruz)

If you read my other effortpost a bit up on this page, you'll notice that the governors are signed are pretty much the same who were seen as anti-Anaya or at least unenthusiastic in their support for the Frente's candidate. It's interesting that Tony Gali, Moreno Valle's governor in Puebla, is on the list: further proof that Moreno Valle has turned his attention to what matters more for him!

https://adnpolitico.com/presidencia/2018/06/27/sin-mencionar-a-anaya-7-gobers-panistas-ofrecen-trabajar-con-nuevo-presidente

[Devout Centrist]

AMLO is closing his campaign in Estadio Azteca right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E_60R4Qsn4

[jaichind]

Final Parametria poll has AMLO above 50% but El Bronco at 7%

AMLO (MORENA-PT-PES)       54
Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC)           22
Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL)     18
El Bronco                              7



Vote for Lower House

MORENA    41
PAN           17
PRI            16
PT               5
MC              5
PRD            4
PVEM          4
PES             4
PANAL         3

By alliance then it is
MORENA-PT-PES    50
PAN-PRD-MC         26
PRI-PVEM-PANAL   23