Surveys Viewed as Generating More Heat Than Light : Polls Becoming an Issue in Mexico’s Campaign

According to a recent Gallup poll, Carlos Salinas de Gortari is favored by 56% of surveyed voters in the upcoming Mexico presidential election.

Or is it only 49%, if undecided and abstaining voters in the same poll are included? Or is 62%, as estimated in a recent Mexican university study, the real measure of Salinas’ popularity?

Or is rival candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, running on behalf of several leftist parties, Mexico’s leading electoral force, as claimed in another poll? Or is conservative candidate Manuel J. Clouthier, by his own claims, the secret front-runner?

Making Its Mark

Opinion polling is making its mark for the first time in Mexico’s modern political history, but so far, the surveys have thrown more heat than light on the campaign.

By all accounts this is Mexico’s hardest-fought presidential race in recent memory, although Salinas, an economist and candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, is considered the certain winner. The PRI and its machinery are unbeatable at the ballot box, experts here concur. The vote is scheduled July 6.

But with the size of the PRI victory still at issue and with strong opposition candidates enlivening the political landscape, the blossoming of polls is being viewed with interest and a great measure of skepticism. The question being asked is: Are the polls information tools or tools of propaganda?

Even the Roman Catholic Church, normally a silent observer in elections, warned against taking polling seriously. Mexican bishops’ spokesman Felipe Hernandez told reporters he thought the surveys so far give Salinas an “exaggerated margin of advantage.”

The recent Gallup poll created a stir because it bore the imprimatur of the Gallup Organization, the New Jersey polling firm, although the legwork and tallying was done by an affiliate, Gallup de Mexico in Mexico City.

The results as announced in a press release were: Salinas, 56%, Cardenas, 23%, Clouthier, 19%. Two minor candidates split the remaining 2%.

The trailing candidates cried foul. They declared that a secret Gallup de Mexico poll taken in March, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, came up with almost identical results. The critics’ assertion: the March poll was a dress rehearsal for May, which in turn was meant to obscure fraud in the forthcoming vote.

In addition, the skeptics ask, why should Salinas’ 56% be a valid indication? Why not the less impressive 49%, which would include undecideds and abstentions, or about 52% if the undecideds were apportioned among the candidates?

“One figure is no more valid than the other,” commented political analyst Jorge Castaneda. “It just depends on whether one wants to see the PRI with a majority or less. In Mexico, this can have great psychological importance.”

Cardenas, a rebel PRI politician who is running against his old party, complained: “I don’t think the data have any other intention than preparing electoral fraud.”

Both Gallup in New Jersey and in Mexico City vouch for the accuracy and result of the May poll. “We think the methodology speaks for itself,” said Richard Burkholder, a Gallup spokesman in New Jersey.

And Ian Reider, a Gallup de Mexico official, declared: “We get complaints from all sides. Even some PRI people complain that the numbers are too low.”

Reider said that the March poll was undertaken by his company as a public relations effort. It was kept secret because Gallup subsequently received a commission to do a second poll on the condition that it publish no other, he added.

The sponsor of the poll, ECO, a Los Angeles-based Spanish-language television production company, is affiliated with the Mexican television giant Televisa whose owners openly support the PRI.

Controversial Study

In any case, Gallup’s was only the latest of several controversial polls. Not long ago, the influential newspaper Excelsior printed results of a poll taken by an entity calling itself the Investigation Workshop of the Political Science Department at the National Autonomous University.

The poll showed Salinas winning by 61.4%. It turned out, however, that the “workshop” did not exist and that the poll was undertaken by three professors who--in evidently record time--were able to survey 9,000 people throughout Mexico during the last few days in May.

That poll followed a forecast by PRI officials that Salinas would win 20 million votes, a claim considered to be exaggerated in light of incumbent President Miguel de la Madrid’s having polled only 17.5 million votes in 1982 in a race not nearly as tight as this one.

The PRI is not the only organization capable of producing numbers of challenged heritage.

A polling organization run by two Cardenas supporters worked some magic of its own in the spring. It combined data from certain voters, undecided voters and something called “potential voters” to reach the conclusion that Cardenas matched Salinas as Mexico’s top vote getter. Their combined total for all candidates exceeded 100%.

Clouthier has taken the discreet route. He claims victory, according to his own surveys, but keeps the data to himself.

The May Gallup poll was not all good news for the PRI.

First, 56% of the votes for Salinas would be perhaps the lowest percentage in the PRI’s presidential campaign history. Also, the survey suggested that support for the PRI was based more on fear of change than belief that the party or Salinas can improve Mexico’s lot.

Of about 3,000 Mexicans surveyed, 39% thought that economic conditions in the country would improve if the opposition took power. Only 19% thought conditions would deteriorate. On the other hand, more than half the Mexicans surveyed said that an opposition victory would translate into social unrest.