Mexico's 2024 Election: Voting Intention in Guadalajara
A Guadalajara-specific survey on voting intention paints a different picture than that of the national surveys when it comes to Máynez's popularity
Though efforts at decentralization in Mexico have taken off in recent decades, vestiges of the country’s centralized system remain. For many, Mexico City is synonymous with Mexico. When you travel via highway in Mexico, you’ll often see signs for “México” aka Mexico City. Talk to people outside of Mexico City and they’ll refer to the capital simply as “México.” This is a symptom of Mexico’s highly centralized system, one whose initial stages of demise came in the 1980s and culminated in 2014 with the transition of Mexico’s capital city from the Federal District of Mexico to Mexico City and its change in status as an autonomous entity.
When I first arrived to Mexico in 2019, I lived in the ‘epicenter of Mexico,’ Mexico City, but it wasn’t until I moved to Guadalajara (what some consider the cultural epicenter of Mexico) that I began to better grasp the nuances of the country - from the culture and politics to the security and economic situations. Looking at English media sources, a clear narrative about Mexico’s 2024 elections emerges: Mexico’s current ruling party candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum holds a strong lead, followed by the opposition candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, and trailing quite far behind is the Movimiento Ciudadano candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez. Sheinbaum will win and Máynez is just an obscure, third-party candidate with no actual chance of success. My experiences and interactions in Guadalajara have been otherwise… Máynez is not an obscure candidate, but rather a quite popular one with his own personalized song and its accompanying dance. He’s the only candidate who is not from the old-guard ranks of the PRI, PAN, or PRD. He’s an appealing option for the presidency who has drummed up significant public support, especially because he was relatively unknown in national politics until the launch of his campaign this January. Wanting to know more about the perception of Movimiento Ciudadano in Guadalajara, Jesús Alejandro Gómez Ledezma and I surveyed voter intention in the city.
Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico, home to over 5 million tapatíos, and is the capital city of the state of Jalisco. Jalisco is a haven for the party Movimiento Ciudadano and one of just two states where Movimiento Ciudadano holds the governorship. The metropolitan area of Guadalajara consists of five municipalities, four of which are currently governed by Movimiento Ciudadano. The party maintains an undeniably strong foothold in the city and the results from this survey reflect as such.
Yes, the survey is small in scope compared to national surveys, but it highlights a more specific demographic and paints quite a different picture than that of the national surveys that consistently show Sheinbaum with a significant lead. This has been consistent since the official start of the campaign season earlier this year, but the results did diverge with the Simulacro Electoral Universitario, or the mock elections during which over a quarter of a million students from nearly 500 colleges and universities in Mexico voted for the next president of Mexico. The results are non-binding and do not contribute to the actual election day tally, but they do reveal important insights about the youth vote (18-34 years old) in Mexico, a population that constitutes 37% of Mexico’s total eligible voting population. Claudia Sheinbaum won the 2024 Simulacro Electoral with 63.5% of the vote, followed by Jorge Álvarez Máynez with 23.1% of the total vote, and Xóchitl Gálvez came in third place with just 8.5% of the vote. This marks a significant departure from the national polls.