Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Potential Problems for the PRI

Jorge Fernández Menéndez on potential problems for the PRI:
For the PRI, the danger continues to be elsewhere: in the confrontation for the presidential nomination and the temptation, as Dulce María Sauri said, of floating along, without making waves from here until the presidential election. Let's remember that, in 2004, the PRI was in a similar electoral situation to the present and that, the following year, Enrique Peña Nieto won the State of Mexico with more than 50 percent of the votes.

In just one year, internal conflict, the decision to not advance on legislative mattes, and the Madrazo-Elba Esther rupture, and the candidacy of Madrazo left the party with just 23 percent of the votes.

If the story repeats itself, the results will repeat themselves.

I think this undersells the overwhelming importance of the final factor, how unappealing Roberto Madrazo was as a candidate. Madrazo never had the support on anyone's poll (outside of perhaps the Madrazo household straw poll) that Peña Nieto does today, and unless he gets caught in a monumental sort of scandal, there's no way Peña Nieto is going to drop to anywhere near 23 percent, regardless of the legislative posture of the PRI and the intra-party squabbling over the nomination.

No comments: