The Left Wins in Mexico : Again

 On our blog. 

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/the-left-wins-in-mexico-again

 

Claudia Sheinbaum’s Victory Is a Triumph for Mexico

BY

KURT HACKBARTH

 

Claudia Sheinbaum has won Mexico’s presidential election in a landslide. In her victory speech, she paid homage to the social movements of the past and promised to continue MORENA’s impressive record of social progress.

 

…So far, Claudia Sheinbaum holds a thirty-point lead over her conservative rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, 58.3 percent to 28.7 percent, with third-party candidate Jorge Álvarez Maynez coming in at 10.5 percent. According to projections made by the National Electoral Institute, Sheinbaum’s final total was expected to fall within a range of 58.3–60.7 percent, outperforming all but a pair of final preelection polls.

According to the institute’s conteo rápido, or fast count, the landslide was expected to carry over into Congress as well, with MORENA and its allies winning up to 380 of 500 seats in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and up to 88 of 128 seats in the Senate. This would put the center-left coalition within range of its ambitious goal of achieving a qualified majority of two-thirds, which would allow it to pass constitutional reforms on its own (together with the state legislatures it controls). And not only did MORENA win the all-important mayorship of Mexico City with candidate Clara Brugada, the MORENA coalition is also set to pick up at least six of the eight governor’s races up for grabs.

To put MORENA’s victory in perspective, Sheinbaum is on course to best Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)’s 2018 landslide victory of 53 percent by some five to seven points. Where AMLO received a historic total of thirty million votes, Sheinbaum will have received some thirty-five million. Similarly, Gálvez was running about ten to twelve points behind the conservative party’s total in that election. In 2018, the conservative parties Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and National Action Party (PAN) ran separately; this year, they ran in coalition. But instead of adding in numbers, the coalition wound up subtracting.

A Refusal to Be Goaded

True to her scientific background, Sheinbaum ran a disciplined, methodical campaign. Taking nothing for granted despite holding a virtually unchanged lead since announcing her candidacy, Sheinbaum racked up the miles, holding three times as many rallies as Gálvez. Where Gálvez veered from one uncosted policy proposal to another, Sheinbaum rolled out a hundred-point program that includes extending social programs and scholarships, continuing annual minimum-wage increases, consolidating Mexico’s push toward national health care, building a million affordable homes on a rent-to-buy plan, constructing seven long-distance train lines, avoiding the maquiladora experience of the 1990’s by mandating that companies investing in the “nearshoring” phenomenon provide higher wages and benefits, and — in what is certain to continue raising the shackles of multinational energy interests — a public sector–led energy transition building on Mexico’s state-owned oil, electricity, and lithium companies.