Opposition Candidate Leads in Mexico Poll

A major national poll released Thursday shows opposition challenger Vicente Fox taking the lead among likely Mexican voters in this July’s election. The survey fed feverish speculation that the world’s longest-ruling party could be headed for its first defeat in a presidential race.

The poll by U.S.-based firm Zogby International was the first distributed publicly by a professional, independent company that put Fox ahead. The survey appears to reflect growing support for the National Action Party candidate, who was widely regarded as the winner of a nationally televised debate April 25.

The Zogby poll, commissioned by Reuters news service, found that 46.3% of likely voters who had chosen a candidate planned to vote for Fox. Another 41.6% preferred Francisco Labastida, candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has held the presidency for 71 years. The poll had a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

If the trend is confirmed in other polls, Mexico’s presidential race could be at a defining moment, analysts said.

“This could take away the idea the PRI is unbeatable,” said political scientist Jose Antonio Crespo, a political scientist and expert on the party. He said such a perception could induce supporters of other opposition parties to back Fox.

Only one other company has produced polls showing Fox ahead. Surveys in February and April commissioned by the Economists and Associates Group, a Mexico City consulting firm, gave Fox the lead. But those polls had little impact because they were done for a group of private clients and the results were not widely distributed.

The Zogby survey, presented at a news conference Thursday, follows other polls in recent weeks that have shown Fox closing in on Labastida. The latest poll is bad news for a PRI campaign already shaken by the candidate’s lackluster performance in the recent debate, analysts said.

“This generates a dynamic that could orient the vote of many people against the PRI,” Crespo said.

The PRI has clung to the presidency despite a series of economic crises and corruption scandals that have chipped away at its popularity. Many analysts believe the party has continued to win in part because the opposition is divided between the center-right National Action Party and the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.

But the poll released Thursday indicates some PRD voters were gravitating toward Fox. The PRD candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, was the choice of only 9.3% of likely voters in the survey, several points below his standing in other recent polls. Three other minor-party candidates split the rest of the voting preferences.

Fox, a former rancher and Coca-Cola executive who portrays himself as a blunt-speaking everyman in cowboy boots, said the new poll shows he has the PRI on the run.

“Now we understand why Labastida is looking so washed out,” the candidate said. “They know very well they’re going to lose and that Mexicans have already made their decision to not continue with more of the same.”

Labastida’s team dismissed the significance of the Zogby survey. Javier Trevino, a campaign official, said the poll overrepresented urban residents. He also said the PRI campaign’s internal polling shows Labastida ahead.

Labastida grabbed a commanding lead in polls after he won the party’s first-ever presidential primary in November. But the longtime bureaucrat has suffered from a cautious strategy, infighting in his campaign and the charismatic Fox’s knack for stealing the limelight, analysts say.

With less than two months left in the campaign, the polls could still shift considerably. The Zogby results reflected only respondents who had decided on a candidate. But the firm noted that nearly one-third of likely voters who were polled were undecided or didn’t answer.

The Zogby study was based on face-to-face interviews with 1,062 likely voters. It was conducted between April 29 and May 7.

The poll also found that 62.2% of those interviewed believe the country is on the wrong track, and 57.4% feel that the PRI doesn’t deserve to keep the presidency.