Next Year

David Agren has a good post running down the races for governor next year, specifically in the State of Mexico. Highlights:

Citing survey data from GCE - which polls for Milenio - Berrueto listed some of the states with the least-popular governors prior to the elections (with 32 signifying last place):

32. Oaxaca (PRI)
31. Aguascalientes (PAN)
28. Zacatecas (PRD)
27. Puebla (PRI)
26. Tlaxcala (PAN)

In all five states, the incumbent party lost. On the other end of the survey, the states with popular governors holding elections included:

2. Tamaulipas (PRI)
5. Veracruz (PRI)
6. Quintana Roo (PRI)
10. Durango (PRI)
11. Hidalgo (PRI)

The PRI won all five races on July, although its victories in Durango and Hidalgo have been questioned. (In Durango, teachers loyal to the PRI governor of neighbouring Coahuila - who ranked most popular in the CGE survey - poured into the state and helped deliver a narrow victory of less than two percentage points. In Hidalgo, the PAN-PRD coalition somehow managed to claim 45 percent of the vote despite running against a shadowy PRI machine that went so far as to have an opposition campaign office raided by state police on election day morning.)

In the GCE survey, Peña Nieto ranked 12, suggesting the PRI is in for a tight race next year in the State of Mexico.

This survey is good news for Humberto Moreira, the top-ranked governor. A couple of factors could conspire to make Moreira, who's typically been treated as a non-entity or a dark-horse, a presidential possibility in 2012. One is that Peña Nieto's designated successor could well lose next year, and Fidel Herrera could be too damaged by the audio tapes and the contested election in Veracruz to be a viable candidate. That would clear the path for Paredes and Beltrones, but both of them are longtime insiders who have lots of enemies, whereas Moreira is a fresher face. The catastrophe of Roberto Madrazo, the ultimate party insider, in 2006 would also would seem to tip the scales toward someone with something of an outsider's profile. Moreira also is a former public school teacher, and the son of teachers as well, which would seem to suggest that he has connections to the SNTE and, therefore, Elba Esther Gordillo, whose electoral support could be a major advantage, if not decisive. I've read that Gordillo is already in bed with Peña Nieto, but it'd be shocking if she doesn't have her bets hedged, and a former teacher who's young and popular would seem like a logical plan B.

Of course, this is all speculation from someone with zero inside info, so make your grain of salt a big one.

Agren also has an interesting post on Diego Fernández de Cevallos.