BORDER POLITICS
by Michael S. Clifford, Managing Editor

PRI Loses Ground in Race for Governor

The Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) lead in the race for the Governor's seat in Chihuahua narrowed during May, according to a poll conducted by the MORI company and El Diario with support from The Dallas Morning News and released May 24.

Whether the loss was due to fallout from the tainted process of choosing a PRI candidate for mayor of Juárez, state and local government money spent on publicity by the currently in-control National Action Party (PAN), or something else all together, was still debated.

The PRI garnered 39 percent of the responses to the question "For which party will you vote?" in the poll taken between May 11 and May 16, compared with 38 percent in April. The PAN took 32 percent, gaining from 27 percent in the April count.

When they phrased the issue in terms of which candidate respondents would vote for, the PRI lead narrowed even more, with its candidate, Patricio Martinez Garcia, gathering 39 percent to the PAN candidate, Ramon Galindo Noriega, taking 33 percent.

Revolutionary Democratic Party candidate Ester Orozco remained a distant third with 4 percent of likely votes. Candidates Arturo Limon of the Mexican Green Ecologist Party (PVEM), and José Angel Gurrea, of the Worker's Party/ Committee for the Popular Defense (PT/CDP), took 2 percent each in the poll.

The change may have resulted from voters' attitudes toward a PRI recovering from a selection process for the Juárez mayoral candidacy El Diario described as "rough."

The survey was conducted starting two days after the pre-election (similar to a U.S. primary). PRI preference dropped from 37 percent to 28 percent in Juárez from April to May, while PAN numbers rose from 31 percent to 35 percent in the poll.

The PRI still dominated the rural areas of the state, taking 59 percent of the preferences in May, up from 48 in April, according to the poll. PAN numbers also went up in May, from 20 percent in April to 24 percent in May. The PRD dropped 8 percent to 1 percent and the number of undecided voters dropped from 20 percent to 14 percent in the same time.

The mayoral pre-election was a factor in the PRI's overall decline, according to Dr. Jorge Cortez Montalvo, professor of communications sciences at the Autonomous University of Chihuahua (UACh), and some juárensens interviewed by El Diario confirmed that theory.

"I have seen enough triviality in the PRI, and for that reason, I am going to vote for the PAN," Rafael González, a Juárez pensioner, told the daily.

Marketing research was another factor in the PAN turnaround, according to Cortez Montalvo. The candidates of other parties criticized PAN publicity efforts when told of the poll results. They said advertising paid for by the PAN-controlled state and municipal governments contributed to the party's momentum. They also accused the PAN of exceeding legal campaign spending limits already.

"It wins the elections that spends more, and in this case National Action is spending a lot of money, that it would be advisable to investigate from where they are financing," their efforts, José Luis Rodríguez, leader of the Juárez PVEM told El Diario.
Martinez Garcia also denounced PAN spending, but remained confident in his statements.

"To win, the PAN needs to spend six times more money than it has invested to date in propaganda and gifts to the electorate," Martinez Garcia told the paper. PRI leaders promised to take their complaints to the state legislature and the State Electoral Institute (IEE). PAN candidate Galindo Noriega, however, saw the situation differently.

"The candidate of the PRI and the PRI as a party are desperate, because they know they are going to lose," Galindo Noriega told El Diario. PAN leaders later offered to open their books, El Diario reported.

PRI also saw their shrinking lead in the polls as a challenge, leader Jorge Esteban Sandoval told the paper.

"(The results of the survey) force us to redouble our efforts and to correct errors, to do more serious and responsible work to recover the ground if it is lost," he said.

Not all the experts would commit to the idea that the Juárez mayoral primary or PRI publicity accounted for changes in the poll results since April.

"The impact on the people is more cumulative and long term," Daniel M. Lund, director of MORI, told El Diario. Much of the PAN gain came from voters who were undecided in
April, with 21 percent in May compared with 27 percent the month before.


Still, the "indecisos," which included those who responded that they would vote for no one, those who would not reveal their choice, those who said they would not vote, and those who did not know who they would vote for, could be the decisive factor in the July election, Guillermo Hernández, researcher at UACh told El Diario.

"They will be the undecided and those who at the last hour change their preferences who decide in large part the fight of the Sunday, July 5," Hernández said. The smaller number of undecided voters would, however, give the parties "less cloth to cut," when contending for votes, according to Hernández. Factors other than current controversies influence voters more, Hernández also said.

"The common sense of the electorate, the personal work of the candidates, and the vision that is had of the parties, is that which will move the electorate in their preferences," according to Hernández.

Source: El Diario