Mexico’s ruling party Morena said it will not reveal the names of the external pollsters that will carry out a survey to select its nominee for 2024 presidential elections until the day the candidate is announced, adding to questions on the opacity of the process.
(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s ruling party Morena said it will not reveal the names of the external pollsters that will carry out a survey to select its nominee for 2024 presidential elections until the day the candidate is announced, adding to questions on the opacity of the process.
Party authorities met Thursday afternoon in a closed-door meeting to conduct a lottery system to select the pollsters that will carry out the survey on who should represent Morena as election “coordinator,” alongside a party-led measurement. The four external firms selected will be vetted Friday by a party commission that will verify if they have the necessary experience, the technical requirements and sufficient staff, said Morena’s national party head Mario Delgado.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is not eligible to run again for election in June. Whoever wins the Morena nomination has a strong chance of winning the 2024 election, given the high popularity of incumbent Lopez Obrador. Because campaigning doesn’t officially begin until next year, the party is running its own selection process through a survey process overseen by its own structure as well as the external pollsters.
The names of the companies will not be announced until Sept. 6, when the candidate will be revealed.
“To protect the work of these pollsters, so they don’t have any type of external pressure, we will not share their names until Sept. 6, when the results are presented,” Delgado said in webcast remarks.
He added that any polling firms that had results that were “distorted or discordant” with the outcome of the last eight state elections in 2022 and 2023 were removed from the lottery.
The meeting lasted over four hours, underscoring the tensions over the methodology of the process that will select a “national coordinator” for the campaign, who is also likely to be the nominee for president. Representatives of the candidates were present, as well as a notary, who conducted the lottery process.
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Morena’s campaign is heating up after one of the frontrunners, former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, said Wednesday that the ruling party was fueling support for another frontrunner, former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum. Lopez Obrador rejected Ebrard’s claims Thursday, saying that the government is acting fairly.
–With assistance from Maya Averbuch.
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