Politics: AMLO approval slips, perceptions flip
The huge margin of approval enjoyed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador throughout his first year in office has vanished, according to the latest GEA-ISA poll. The president should find those results especially troubling considering the wide edge he enjoyed throughout the spring and early autumn. Furthermore, these dismal numbers are based on polling conducted just before the president seemed to dismiss the importance of the mass March 8 protests against femicide, and began to emphatically minimize the threat posed by the COVID 19 pandemic. His approval numbers are now much closer in line with an increasingly critical public perception of his administration’s policies that first began to emerge last June, including the public's frustration with a lack of progress in his signature anti-corruption efforts and his handling of the public security crisis.
The damage is by no means limited to perceptions of AMLO as head government as there has also been a sharp shift in the way people see López Obrador as an individual. His credibility, which he badly needs at this critical juncture, has plunged. And now more people are troubled by AMLO's being president than those who say that fact instills confidence in them. The general perception of whether the country is moving in the right direction has now totally flipped.
Judging by these numbers he is no longer the Teflon or "feel-good" president, having squandered much of his once vast political capital and popularity exactly when he needs them most as the country is confronted by global economic and epidemiological threats. It would take a major correction of his style of governing and a major cabinet overhaul to overcome a record of administrative incompetence if he hopes to keep his approval numbers from tanking further and avoid a crisis of governability, as more and more sectors tire of waiting for the administration to wake up and begin to take the initiative themselves.
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