Credit:UNESCO

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is the most popular political organization in the country, according to a poll by Demotecnia published in Milenio. 42 per cent of respondents would vote for the PRI in the next election to the Chamber of Deputies.

The governing National Action Party (PAN) is second with 39 per cent, followed by the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) with 16 per cent.

The PAN’s Vicente Fox ended 71 years of uninterrupted rule by the PRI in the 2000 presidential election, winning a six-year term with 42.5 per cent of the vote.

Mexican voters chose their new president in July 2006. Official results placed Felipe Calderón of the PAN as the winner with 36.68 per cent of all cast ballots, followed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PRD with 36.11 per cent. Calderón—a former energy secretary—took over as Mexico’s head of state in December. López Obrador has never accepted the outcome of the election, and to this day refers to himself as Mexico’s "legitimate president."

In the July 2006 legislative election, the PAN secured 206 seats in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies, followed by a PRD-led alliance with 160 lawmakers, and a coalition of the PRI and the Green Environmentalist Party (PVEM) with 121 mandates.

Calderón’s administration is trying to introduce legislation that would allow foreign investors to participate in state-owned oil company Pemex. The PRD and the Broad Progressive Front (FAP) fiercely oppose the bill, claiming it is the beginning of a process that would lead to Pemex’s privatization. The PRI has expressed "conditional support" for the proposal.

Earlier this month, PRI senator Francisco Labastida said his party will not approve the bill as it is right now, declaring, "We are going to make changes and the changes will be substantial. But I think we will be ready enough in September to put something together."

Polling Data

Which party would you vote for in the next election to the Chamber of Deputies?

Source: Demotecnia / Milenio
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 Mexican adults, conducted from May 17 to May 20, 2008. Margin of error is 3.2 per cent.

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