Politics: Limits to AMLO’s vast public support
Three months into his administration, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has further grown his approval ratings (up 7pp since December, to 64%) even as those disapproving climbed from a fifth to a fourth of voters. People remain generally optimistic about the government, although slightly less so than when AMLO first took office, and public opinion is overwhelmingly positive about most specific programs, although a couple of his policy moves (eliminating direct support to both childcare centers and domestic abuse shelters) are opposed by around eight in ten registered voters.
But there are potentially more telling signs of temporal limitations to AMLO's support. A clear majority continues to express optimism in relation to this administration, with slightly less than a fourth pessimistic and a similar share indicating no opinion, but the number of those saying the new government inspires a sense of concern rather than confidence grew from about a fourth to a third of the population, and the majority expressing confidence slipped 4bp to 56%. In addition, there has been a rebound in skepticism regarding the current government’s promises to structurally transform the country, and only about a fifth of people now expect a great deal of progress in AMLO’s signature issue of fighting corruption.
However, President López Obrador has been very effective in managing expectations, and his first three months in office produced a notable increase in the percentage of people willing to wait more than a year to see if he is delivering on his promises to effect major change. But aside from the roughly 30% of unconditional supporters, at this point approval of this administration appears to be more predicated on people’s hopes for receiving direct economic benefits for themselves and their family members, a calculation that makes all the more crucial how successfully the government rolls out social programs that provide direct benefits to significant sectors of the population, including to the roughly one fourth of respondents who said they had already been negatively affected by cuts to pre-existing programs.
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