Another Campaign, Another Literary Oversight

Vázquez Mota's campaign sent out a press release identifying Mario Vargas Llosa as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He's really racking up the hardware, evidently.

Less embarrassingly but more worryingly for panistas, Vázquez Mota has lost eight points from the previous GEA-ISA poll, from 29 to 21 points. Interestingly, both AMLO and Peña Nieto also lost two points, so indecision and apathy seems to be the big winner. The February GEA-ISA poll, which put her within seven points of Peña Nieto, had fanned a great deal of optimism, but with her deficit rising to 13 points, it seems that it was either an outlier or a temporary blip.

I think it's long been clear that Vázquez Mota's campaign is not going to catch fire, and, by dint of her charisma and talent, fly past Peña Nieto, making us all forget he was over the runaway favorite. She could still win, but it seems more and more likely that the same dynamic that has prevailed over the past three years --Peña Nieto dominating-- will carry into the election. This is perhaps dangerously short-sighted given that the campaign hasn't officially begun, but he has a 15- or 20-point lead, the public seems willing to forgive any defect of his, personal or professional, and his opponents are the most disliked politician in Mexico and a lightweight. The debates have the potential to shift the landscape, but, without Peña Nieto going catatonic or admitting to kidnapping children, I am skeptical that they could truly upend the status quo laid out above.