A precise campaign, López Obrador’s pulls and the opposition’s mistakes: Claudia Sheinbaum’s keys to victory | Mexican elections 2024

Claudia Sheinbaum on Sunday became Mexico’s first president with 35.9 million votes and also the most voted president in the country’s recent history. According to the district count that shows the final result of the election, Morena’s candidate received 59.7% of support. This is 32 points above the next candidate: Xochitl Gálvez from the opposition coalition formed by the PRI, PAN and PRD, who obtained 27.4%. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s polling strength, Sheinbaum’s academic and dialogue profile, as well as her effective campaign in contrast to the weak opposition, have been pointed out by analysts as key factors in this overwhelming victory. The presidential results also include Morena’s victory in seven of the nine governorships that were at stake, with a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and two seats away from achieving it in the Senate as well.

The Morena candidate won with 62% and 56% among men and women, respectively. It received overwhelming support across all generations: it exceeded 50% in all age groups. He also won in all socioeconomic categories, with the majority of the population with less than 10,000 pesos and the population with more than 50,000 pesos also choosing Sheinbaum. Aguascalientes was the only state in which Xochitl Gálvez won, just as employers were the only professional category in which the PRI and PAN alliance emerged victorious. Looking back at this overwhelming victory, EL PAÍS brings together three experts to analyze the keys that made it possible.

The Drag of López Obrador

Morena presented these elections as an election on the continuation of the project of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who also defined them as a referendum on his administration. The Cherry Formation put it as the motto of its campaign: Claudia Sheinbaum was the second floor of change. The party, founded in 2014 by the current president, staked everything on the citizen approval of what had already been done in this six-year term. And it worked.

“The vote for Claudia is a vote of approval for the 4Ts,” says linguist and analyst Violeta Vázquez-Rojas, who argues that Sheinbaum supported the president’s slogan of getting the whole of Morena to vote to achieve the so-called Plan C, which would have enabled a majority in Congress to pass the initiatives that López Obrador had pending, especially the great judicial reform. The figure of the president has been essential for this. “For the last six years, we have been in an intense presidential campaign in favor of his movement, with permanent promotions and constant attacks on his opponents, which has weakened the opposition, because without the president controlling the media, he controls the public discussion. It’s not that the media speaks well of the president, it’s that everything revolves around the issues that he raises centrally,” says Khemvirg Puente, political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

In addition to its own popularity, analysts also identify the impact of the social programs of this six-year term. “The government has had its weaknesses in the fight against organized crime or in its health policy, but what it has managed to do well is a social policy that provides direct benefits to the most vulnerable populations in direct transfers, which clearly provide political support towards the party from which they receive them,” says Puente.

an academic profile

The president’s image generates both love and hostility. Something that does not happen with Claudia Sheinbaum, with a more technocratic and communicative profile, and which experts identify as the key for the Morena candidate to obtain even more votes than her mentor. “López Obrador has always generated fear in certain political and economic sectors,” says María Eugenia Valdés, a researcher of political processes. It is more a question of form than substance. “What is going to be different with Claudia Sheinbaum?” In the same sense, Violeta Vázquez-Rojas explains her effective campaign: “Claudia did a very good job of reconciling with sectors that felt annoyed with the president. She managed to call them, to have a dialogue with them and to show openness. She convinced many people who were disappointed and they voted for her. ” Analysts identify in this sector especially the vote of academics and the middle class: “There are people who do not like the president and Claudia’s style, it is less confrontational. In this he found a certain harmony with 4T.

All three analysts agree that Sheinbaum’s conduct has been “impeccable”. “She is a left-wing woman who has never been a PRI or PAN member like others in Morena, she is consistent, she has always been involved in social causes, she was a student leader, a university professor, a researcher, connected to international organizations, she is a left-wing woman and modern, which has benefited her campaign,” Puente believes. The political scientist believes that the candidate had another point in her favor: she did not have to worry so much about regional work because the party was already doing that.

Analysts have also noted the value of the vote that Sheinbaum could have received to become Mexico’s first president. “Claudia’s victory cannot be understood without the struggle of women. Women have been the most important social movement in this six-year term, with a president who was slow in his response,” says Valdés, who says the candidate’s slogan is true. “She does not come alone, we all come. Also, her victory cannot be explained without understanding Mexico’s recent history, from ’68 to now. She is a product of that social struggle, there is a very large and diverse movement behind her, and there are decades of struggle of the left in Mexico.

A directionless opposition

“The best possible opponent we had was,” summarizes political analyst Violeta Vázquez-Rojas, “a partisan Frankenstein of three opposing currents.” The coalition formed by former political rivals, the PAN and the PRI, together with the traditional left of the PRD, has not convinced voters. In this election the parties have obtained fewer votes than they obtained separately in 2018. The PRI has lost almost two million support; according to the final results, the PRD is on the verge of disappearing, with 481,000, and the PAN, 352,000. “The opposition parties, without many ideological coincidences, have been forced to unite in an alliance that their voters do not consider coherent: PAN voters do not want to vote for the PRI and PRI voters do not want to vote for the PAN,” explains UNAM political scientist Khemvirg Puente.

Analysts also believe that Galvez’s profile as a candidate did not work as the face of the opposition. “Although he is a charismatic man, he never managed to create his own, alien personality that would make us forget the leadership of his parties and their leaders as a true alternative,” says Puente. Violeta Vazquez-Rojas adds the lack of proposals: “He never presented a national project. He proposed a universal scholarship for women or a super prison, crazy ideas that he withdrew the next day. “He was a terrible candidate.”

The opposition, on the other hand, chose as its main battles the battles related to autonomous organizations such as the country’s Supreme Court (SCJN), the National Transparency Institute (INAI) or the National Electoral Institute (INE). The coalition focused on “defending” the organs that were the target of President López Obrador’s darts. “These types of attacks played a marginal role in the election,” believes Puente, “the existence of these types of institutions represents almost nothing for voters because they feel that they are very far from their daily lives or some do not even know about them.” It took a long time for the opposition to understand that democracy is not as relevant to the population as their personal well-being, and that they link it more to economic income or social policies than to rights that seem abstract to them.

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