Big win over López Obrador gives Sheinbaum the option to make his mandate

If presidents so far can regard the votes they receive as a reward for their political performance, Sheinbaum’s receipts are almost as good as the votes they receive. Five more points The new president will implement on his side what his mentor achieved six years ago. The territorial control of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) is in López Obrador’s hands, but the political game, with governorships that depend a lot on their relationship with central power, will hand the reins for a six-year term to Sheinbaum. It will depend on López Obrador’s sincerity whether he will effectively back down, should adverse tensions arise in the command of the country.

With this, in addition to the fact that Morena, along with its junior partners from the Workers’ Party and the Green Ecologist Party, has reached a qualified majority in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Sheinbaum will face the prospect of constitutional reform that accommodates the reforms that López Obrador has not been able to push through.

But even if the faction in power remains at the doorstep of that qualified majority, it could perhaps aspire to negotiate reforms with the Citizens’ Movement, which is the third force in contention in these elections and which has opened a gap in the Mexican political game. Around the sole candidacy of a PAN member, the opposition bloc formed from the right of the PAN, the left of the former ruling PRI and the PRD Xochitl Gálvezhas been below the results obtained six years ago, when they were different. Then, in the presidential election he got 40% of the vote, while now Gálvez would have got around 30%.

The unity the opposition has shown in recent months is unlikely to last. Without winning the Mexico City mayoralty, which is also at stake in these elections and which Morena will continue to control, the three opposition parties, already very uneven, will fight among themselves to re-establish themselves in terms of consolidating Morena hegemony. (Despite losing some governorships in some of the states at stake this Sunday, Morena still controls a majority of the states).

In the 2018 midterm elections, Morena and its allies lost their positions in Congress, suggesting that López Obrador’s movement could suffer a new electoral blow this Sunday. In short, the president presented these elections as an opportunity to advance his legacy.

Less populist

López Obrador never wanted to accept the legislative limits that existed for his grand ambitions in the second half of his mandate. Riding on a consistent popularity that remains above 60%, the president sought to weaken the power of the institutions that opposed his reforms, from the electoral referee to the Supreme Court and the press. He achieved something in that objective and thus obtained a certain margin for his government action; however, this leaves his fourth transformation agenda (presented as the crowning of previous changes made in Mexico’s history) in the middle.

A package of reforms ranging from dismantling autonomous government agencies that monitor transparency to the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish elections by popular vote and proportional representation is stuck in Congress.

Sheinbaum is now going to take care of it. A period of rhetoric less populist, less revolutionary in character than that of his mentor can be expected from him. Only if the future president abandons his predecessor’s tradition of “mornings” (daily morning talks, with great verbal incontinence, presented as informative conferences, but which were arguments in favor of the government and against the scrutiny of the press), can the presidency adopt a more pragmatic tone.

The relative macroeconomic stability of Mexico, whose economy has performed better than anticipated in the years following the pandemic, has weighed in favor of Sheinbaum’s victory and provided him with a margin of peace to be able to install his government.