MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Public support for Mexican opposition senator Xochitl Galvez has risen since she declared her intention last week to seek the presidency in 2024, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday.
Galvez’s entry into the fray has enlivened media interest in the opposition’s hopes of competing with the leftist ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) in the June 2024 election to succeed President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Mexican presidents are limited to a single term, and Lopez Obrador’s popularity has helped create the impression that MORENA will be very difficult to beat in the election – an impression backed up by polling to date.
However, Galvez, a maverick lawmaker whose sense of humor and ability to make headlines cut against the grain of Mexican politics, has encouraged some opposition supporters and analysts to believe she could make life uncomfortable for MORENA.
Of more modest origins than many Mexican career politicians, she is widely viewed as being able to connect with poorer Mexicans in a manner similar to Lopez Obrador.
A June 30 to July 2 poll of 500 adult Mexicans by newspaper El Financiero showed that 34% of respondents viewed Galvez favorably, up 10 percentage points from a month earlier.
That compared with 31% who held the opposite view. The remainder were neutral or did not know her.
The telephone survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, El Financiero said.
Galvez, 60, was elected to the Senate for the center-right National Action Party (PAN). She has contrasted her Indigenous roots with those of the main MORENA presidential hopefuls, who she says grew up with more privilege.
Her nearest rival in the poll of opposition figures, former tourism minister Enrique de la Madrid, had a 29% favorability rating, while 37% of those surveyed saw him in a negative light. None of her four closest competitors had a net positive rating.
The opposition figures polled came from an alliance of opposition parties due to announce its candidate on Sept. 3.
Galvez has drawn steady fire from MORENA supporters since launching her bid, and barbs from Lopez Obrador, who described her as the “representative of the oligarchy.”
(Reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
