The Economist also has this levelheaded article (subscription only) on Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and the Mexican election. Here are the key paragraphs:
There are reasons why a switch to the left might be good for Mexico. Mr Fox and his predecessors have wrongly assumed that what is good for favoured individual capitalists is good for capitalism. It is hard to disagree when Mr López Obrador rails against such privilege, or against the inequity in NAFTA that requires Mexico to allow tariff-free entry to heavily subsidised American maize.
Yet there are big doubts about Mr López Obrador. Is he really a modern social democrat like those who govern Chile, Uruguay and Brazil? His political origins lie in the most populist strand of the PRI. He paints himself as a messianic saviour of the poor, but would he help them much? As mayor, he stressed social policies, but ones aimed at political impact more than effectiveness. He has almost no knowledge of, nor apparent interest in, the outside world. He has shown a certain contempt for the rule of law and for Mexico's handful of modern democratic institutions, such as the Supreme Court, the independent central bank and the electoral authority.
These are all reasons to be concerned about Mr López Obrador. But they do not make him a Mexican version of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's anti-American president. Nor is Mexico Venezuela. Its people are beginning to feel the benefits of the route the country has followed over the past quarter of a century, and its ties with the United States are too strong to be lightly cast off. The real worry, thus, is not that Mr Fox's successor will veer too sharply off the established path. It is that he won't. An overhaul of Congress, the federal system and the police, for starters, and reforms of competition policy, energy, the labour market and taxes would help embed democracy and get the economy moving. In that sense, Mexico needs a radical for president.
In Sunday's New York Times, Ginger Thompson spoke with several voters and got a similar reaction from one of them:
Mr. Hernández, 22, said he supported Mr. López Obrador because he saw how hard it had been for his family to raise itself out of poverty, and how many of his friends' families still had not made it.
"I don't think Mexico should be part of a globalized economy because it doesn't have a market that is strong enough to compete," he said. "The lesson we learned from Nafta is that our farmers cannot compete with the United States," he said, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Outside Cantaros III, the class lines that divide Mexico and shape presidential preferences are easier to see. But even there, it was clear that Mr. Calderón and Mr. López Obrador had won support from people at all levels of society. In many cases people expressed their preferences as a function of their feelings toward Mr. López Obrador, reflecting his dominance of the spotlight.
Boz has some good handicapping of the race via poll numbers. One wonders how the polls account for this:
Thousands of expatriate Mexicans streamed south of the U.S. border on Sunday to vote in their homeland in a tight race with high stakes for crime-weary border residents.
A large stream of U.S.-based Mexicans trekked on foot and piled into cars to vote in a string of gritty border towns from Tijuana in the west to Nuevo Laredo below Texas.
Electoral authorities were taken by surprise at the number of expatriates who showed up.
"It's a very close-fought race ... and if we don't vote, we can't hope to decide the outcome," said Luis Tovar, 28, a shipping agent who drove from San Antonio, Texas, to vote in Nuevo Laredo, just over the Rio Grande.
Many waited for hours in the sweltering heat to cast their ballots in a fight between leftist front runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative rival Felipe Calderon. The leftist had a lead of just two points in opinion polls after a campaign fought over job creation, the economy and graft.
I wonder how their votes would break out. I'm just guessing, but I bet it would go heavily for AMLO. Here's one reason why:
"I'm prepared to wait in line for 10 hours if I have to," said Enedina Trujillo, 32, a Wal-Mart cashier from San Diego as she prepared to vote for the leftist.
"(We need) to get these bandits out of power," she said, referring to Calderon's ruling National Action Party.
Stay tuned.
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