Who grows and who falls in the polls?
Who can surprise?
Who has the best candidate?
For now, everything is unknown in the race for the presidency.
The pre-campaign period has come to an end this Thursday with massive rallies, the last clashes between the candidates and the ballot defined for the elections on June 2.
Mexico already knows that Claudia Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez will be the candidates and already has a first idea of their proposals, their projects and their strategies, despite the fact that the campaigns formally begin in March.
EL PAÍS consulted four experienced electoral strategists to have a clearer vision of the strengths and weaknesses of the three contenders, where the keys to victory lie and what they expect in the coming months.
“Everything is open, nothing has been decided for anyone,” says Aleix Sanmartín, the man who took the reins of Pedro Sánchez's last campaign in Spain.
The Political Communication expert — who has worked with figures such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Marcelo Ebrard, Felipe Calderón or Margarita Zavala — sees an election with well-defined roles: Sheinbaum starts as the favorite, Gálvez is the main challenger and Álvarez Máynez, a mystery that can go well, badly or give “a big surprise.”
“In 2018, the people of Mexico decided not to elect another president, but to change the course of their history, to begin the Fourth Transformation,” Sheinbaum said in his closing at the Monument to the Revolution, the same public square he chose before win Morena's candidacy last September.
Since then, the ruling party has positioned the slogan “continuity with change” in a clear bid to capitalize on the president's high approval rating and draw the lines for his successor.
“López Obrador is the main asset of Sheinbaum and Morena,” says Víctor Serrano, partner at Elemental, a communication agency that works for the party in Government.
Serrano considers that his client has been successful in conducting the succession process through surveys, in communicating what the project they defend is and in presenting this election as “a debate about the continuity of the transformation or a return to the past that they do not like.” “It works for citizens.”
Sanmartín also cites the president's support for his candidate as a strength, but comments that this brings his own complications.
“The problem with Sheinbaum's campaign is that López Obrador understands politics as a discursive dispute and he is the one who sets the narrative and discursive strategy.
Therefore, you cannot go one bit outside of her framework, which means that she has little room for maneuver,” he says.
“She has not been brilliant, but she has run a correct campaign from a technical point of view, without great successes or errors and under the idea that
a priori
she does not have to take unnecessary risks,” adds the specialist.
Sheinbaum's rivals have not hesitated to criticize his attempts to imitate the president's speeches, formulas and even the way he speaks.
Gálvez's team describes her as a “puppet.”
“Mrs. Sheinbaum, if you are given permission, I challenge you to debate,” the opposition candidate snapped this week.
Aline Ross, partner and director of the consulting firm Lexia, comments that the official candidate has to find a balance between presenting herself as a legitimate successor to the Fourth Transformation and continuing to demonstrate that she is a woman with her own ideas and merits to reach the presidential seat. .
Ross sees sustained efforts in Morena's campaign to show a more empathetic candidate, with a warmer tone and who does not fall into excess of confidence or provocations, but she is not going to remain silent either.
“Not by much provocation does she grow in the polls,” she said after being challenged by her main pursuer.
“We have seen very different pre-campaigns, while Sheinbaum has focused on the collective, Gálvez has a proposal more focused on telling his own story, on connecting with voters by saying who he is and where he comes from,” says Ross.
After a difficult start, the candidate from the opposition front has gone from less to more and showed muscle last weekend in a massive event at the Mexico City Arena.
“We have to give the most historic fight,” she told her supporters at her last event in Guanajuato, one of the most important strongholds of the National Action Party (PAN).
“Xóchitl has returned to his origins, he has listened to his followers and he has broken out of the cardboard mold that they wanted to impose on his speech, his personality, his spark,” says Luis Rodolfo Oropeza, a strategist who built his career advising the PAN. and that he is a partner in the consulting firm Día D, which currently works for the opposition front.
Gálvez's team is the one that seems to have made the most drastic adjustments to leave behind the ghosts that weighed down the first stage of its pre-campaign: the involuntary
lapses
, the problems in positioning itself in media coverage and the apparent disconnection with the party leaders. who apply for it.
Her rivals claim that she is “inflated” and that she “does not have the potential to be a candidate.”
“They look soulless, disorganized and confrontational,” says Serrano about his rivals.
Oropeza, on the other hand, affirms that the former senator has shown her most consistent face in recent days, she has worked to overthrow the idea that the election is defined and has regained momentum to take the race towards contrast, to show herself as a real alternative. and competitive against Sheinbaum.
“The greatest asset that the broad opposition front has is that half of the population does not agree with the president and that percentage increases when the Morena governors are evaluated,” says the specialist.
“The front has focused on saying why you should not vote for Morena, but it has to work harder to convince why you should vote for them,” he adds.
Sheinbaum has opted for Tatiana Clouthier, who led López Obrador's campaign, as his spokesperson.
Gálvez has turned to Max Cortázar, Calderón's former spokesperson, to guide his communications team, in one of the most notable movements of this electoral stage.
“You may like it or not, but if anyone knows how to win elections in the PAN, it is the Calderonistas,” Sanmartín says.
The Citizen Movement (MC) pre-campaign was inescapably marked by the ephemeral nomination of the governor of Nuevo León, Samuel García;
the political crisis in Nuevo León, and the surprise nomination of deputy Jorge Álvarez Máynez, a profile little known among voters.
In Ross' opinion, Dante Delgado's party dominates its narrative and becomes strong in communication on social networks, but it faces an uphill battle against time: Álvarez Máynez only had seven days of pre-campaign and Samuel García, ten.
“They don't know us, they don't know what we're made of,” declared the candidate at his event in Monterrey.
“They will have to find the conversion point between
likes
and votes, and they will also have to make their party known,” says Ross.
The MC candidate fits as “the new one” and “the young one,” labels originally designed for the governor, but he has to define his own path.
“It's one thing for the tennis shoes to fit and another for the suit to fit,” says the specialist.
“I think the candidates are saving their best dance steps for the next
round
,” says Oropeza and adds that “although no rival can be underestimated, experience teaches us that Morena is not invincible.”
Sanmartín, who gained notoriety by achieving the unexpected re-election of Sánchez in Spain, insists that nothing can be advanced yet because "electors increasingly define their vote later in the campaigns" and because it will be "an election that will be decided with the votes of the undecided and the
switchers
”, voters prone to change who they vote for in each election.
“That is why it is so important to believe that you can win, to define well what the theoretical framework of your candidacy is, who you are, who the heroes and the villains are, who you speak to and at what moment, that is what we did with the PSOE ”says the strategist.
Sanmartín anticipates a “high contrast campaign” and predicts that the attacks will be recurrent.
“Fear is more powerful than hope,” he explains about the “dirty war” and why it is a phenomenon that is replicated in campaigns around the world.
Serrano does not fear the possibility of a confrontational campaign because he affirms that this will be an election decided by “the convinced”, the voters who are already clear about who they are going to vote for and who they are not going to vote for.
“Mexico is a much more politicized country, that is what has changed in 2024, now discourse and ideology matter more,” says the strategist, who sees in the opposition “a terrible identity and brand conflict.”
“
Timing
is essential at a strategy table, you have to know when to hold on and when to
sprint
,” says Ross, who anticipates that family finances and security will be the great catalysts of the campaign.
“Strategists will have to be true jugglers, they must have consistency in the narrative they promote, but also innovate to capture attention among the thousands of stimuli to which we are exposed and, above all, work on the hows,” he adds.
The war rooms are already oiling the engines for the final stretch of the race.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS México newsletter
and receive all the key information on current events in this country