Politics: AMLO’s approval undented by rising discontent with key policies

MEXICO - Report 12 Dec 2022 by Guillermo Valdes and Francisco González

People remain highly critical of many areas of government policy and yet continue to approve of the job President López Obrador is doing, according to GEA-ISA’s most recent quarterly survey of registered voters. The extent to which job growth has proven surprisingly robust goes a long way to explain this. Perceptions of the national economy's performing well jumped 7 points to 56%, while a mere 12% said it was doing poorly. Those who describe their family’s economic situation as good rose by 5 points, while those who said it was bad fell to 13%. Those shifts mark a notable reversal of the September poll, in which optimism sank sharply when voters were asked how they expect their family’s incomes, job status, purchasing power and access to credit would evolve over the next six months.

There was little movement in most areas where respondents tend to rate the administration poorly, although the share of respondents who cite security as the country’s main problem jumped 9 points to 51% (62% when asked about conditions where they live), easily eclipsing all other concerns; 51% now say the governing project needs to change. The percentage of those who think that officials in this government are more corrupt than those of past administrations has risen to 31%, the highest so far.

Despite such negative perceptions of public policy, approval of López Obrador's job in office was unchanged from June at 52%, at the same time as disapproval actually fell a point, to 43%. We also got further confirmation of our thesis that the president’s strong approval numbers are not a result of objective reasons (how the country is faring and public policy results) but affective ones such as belief that AMLO has good intentions and that things will improve by the end of his administration.

And similar to the way that perceptions of how the country is faring and government inefficiency have yet to have an impact on presidential approval, neither have they modified electoral preferences. The slight changes registered with respect to the survey of the previous quarter are within the 3% margin of error.

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