Politics: Widely divergent poll numbers and a potential hidden vote complicate the picture as some surveys show Xóchitl rebounding
Since September, when the de facto presidential campaigns of Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez began, many of the country’s polling firms have showed the Morena nominee way out front. The Oraculus website’s average reading of major polls has detected virtually no movement in the voting intentions for any of the parties or their candidate over the past eight months, and at last count it showed that Sheinbaum continues to enjoy a roughly two-to-one lead over Gálvez, while the Citizens’ Movement (MC) party’s latest nominee has fallen to a very distant third place, with only 5% support.
However, a closer look at the polls is necessary as their simple average can be misleading. The first thing that can be observed in a breakdown of the most recent opinion polls are abysmal differences that in part reflect the very different methods different pollsters employ and the potential for a hidden vote effect at play. At one end of the spectrum is an outlier poll from a Morena-linked firm that shows Sheinbaum ahead by more than 60 points, while a recent survey sponsored by the newspaper El Financiero shows that Claudia’s lead over Xóchitl has narrowed to a mere 16 points.
This week we analyze in greater detail the numbers and explore the possibility that the race may tighten in the coming months.
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