Mexico may veer to the left in 2018

(Photo: Susana González – Bloomberg)

While most of Latin America is shifting to the right, there is a potential exception that may soon keep U.S. policy-makers awake at night: the possibility of a populist leftist victory in Mexico’s 2018 elections.

Judging from the stinging defeat of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the June 5 local elections in 14 Mexican states, Mexicans may be ripe for an anti-establishment leader. And if likely Republican candidate Donald Trump wins the U.S. elections, the resulting nationalistic backlash in Mexico would make a leftist populist victory even more likely (I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

On June 5, Mexican voters sent a clear message that they are tired of the PRI’s corruption, and its inability to combat street crime and improve the economy. The clear winner of the local elections was the center-right National Action Party (PAN, ) which won seven governorships alone or in alliance with smaller parties, and the leftist MORENA, which won Mexico City’s election for a constitutional assembly.

But, for now, all eyes should be focused on MORENA, because its leader, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is much better known — and is more anti-establishment — than any other candidate for the 2018 presidential elections. According to an April 17 survey by the daily Reforma, Lopez Obrador is leading in the race for 2018 with 29 percent of voters’ preferences.

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