Exit poll: Mexico’s ‘AMLO’ leads in presidential vote
Chief rivals concede to leftist candidate who vowed to rule for poor, fight Trump
MEXICO CITY >> An exit poll gave an overwhelming lead to leftist populist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico’s presidential election Sunday night, and one of his chief rivals conceded defeat shortly after polls closed nationwide.
The survey by Consulta Mitofsky said Lopez Obrador had a 16 to 26 percent lead over his nearest rival, conservative Ricardo Anaya.
The candidate said to be in third place, Jose Antonio Meade of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, acknowledged a Lopez Obrador victory in a televised speech.
“For the good of Mexico, I wish him the greatest success,” Meade said.
Lopez Obrador, better known as AMLO, has said he will transform Mexico if he wins this, his third bid for the presidency, vowing to overthrow the “mafia of power” he claims has looted the country and rule for the poor.
“There is a lot of inequality, a lot of violence in this country,” said Lopez Obrador voter Hugo Carlos, 73. “This situation has to be changed.”
Exit polls by Consulta Mitofsky also forecast clear gubernatorial wins for allies of Lopez Obrador’s Morena party in four of eight state races on the ballot plus for the head of government in Mexico City. The central highland state of Guanajuato was predicted to go to a candidate of the
conservative National Action Party.
While Lopez Obrador, 64, held a commanding lead in polls heading into Sunday’s vote, he worried many who fear he could set the country back decades and lead to disaster with an interventionist economic policy.
“I am concerned that some candidates are making proposals that are impossible, because they’re very expensive to carry out,” said Juan Carlos Limas, 26, who lined up at a Mexico City precinct to vote for Ricardo Anaya, who is running second in polls for a right-left coalition.
Lopez Obrador, who cast his ballot early Sunday, has pledged to give scholarships or paid apprenticeships to youth, and increase support payments for the elderly.
All the candidates are lambasting President Donald Trump’s policies against migrants and Mexico, but voters were wondering who could best deal with Trump.
Sunday’s elections for posts at every level of government are Mexico’s largest ever and have become a referendum on corruption, graft and other tricks used to divert taxpayer money to officials’ pockets.
Some see this election as Lopez Obrador’s best shot at the presidency after 12 years of near-permanent campaigning with his antiestablishment message falling on receptive ears.
“The corrupt regime is coming to its end,” Lopez Obrador said at his final campaign event Wednesday. “We represent modernity forged from below.”
Much of the popular ire has been aimed at unpopular President Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose market-oriented economic reforms have yet to benefit many Mexicans, and Meade struggled during the campaign to escape popular rejection of the party.
Anaya tried to harness the youth vote with an emphasis on technology and new ideas, but he divided his own conservative party to take its candidacy and it’s unclear if his new allies in the leftist Democratic Revolution Party will actually turn out for someone from the other end of the ideological spectrum.
Sunday was the first time that an independent candidate appears on the ballot.
Jaime “El Bronco” Rodriguez fought for attention with a horse-mounted “everyman” campaign and by tossing out policy bombs like his proposal to cut off the hands of public officials caught stealing. Without the big party machinery it was an uphill battle.
It is also the first time Mexicans living abroad can vote for down ballot races like senators. More than 181,000 received ballots and the 97,000 that the National Electoral Institute had gotten back by Friday morning were already double what they got in 2012.
Casting his own vote, Pena Nieto promised to work with whoever wins
on the transition.
“The president of the republic and his government will be absolutely respectful and support the authorities that are elected,” Pena Nieto told reporters.
In both of Lopez Obrador’s previous two presidential losses he alleged fraud. In his first loss — by a mere 0.56 percent to conservative Felipe Calderon in 2006 — his supporters held months-long protests in Mexico City and he referred to himself as “the legitimate president.”
His allies warned even before Sunday’s presidential vote that there better not be any funny business.
Still, the voting was by and large peaceful, apart from the usual complaints about some volunteer staffed polling places opening late.
The head of the country’s electoral institute, Lorenzo Cordova, said voting was proceeding “peacefully, without major incidents,” and that only four of the 156,807 polling places failed to open.
On Saturday, the Democratic Revolution party
said four of its members were killed in Mexico State, west of Mexico City, while trying to prevent hand-outs of goods by the ruling party to potential voters.
The government of the northern state of Chihuahua
reported that three people were arrested in the border city of Ciudad Juarez for allegedly trying to buy votes for an unnamed political party.
And in Michoacan state, polling places in a few villages were cancelled after some inhabitants said they didn’t want elections involving political parties, which they mistrust. Some ballots were stolen and burned in the town of Nahuatzen to prevent voting.
In the northwestern border city of Tijuana, 29-yearold engineer Jorge Serrano Martinez said he voted for Lopez Obrador because he wanted “to give the opportunity to another political party to do different things.”
“He is not linked to any act of corruption and he has a history as a social fighter,” Serrano said. “I think he is the least corrupt of all.”