Mexico City mayor narrowly leads ruling party’s presidential race, poll finds

MEXICO CITY, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum holds a slight advantage over Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard in the race to be the ruling party’s candidate in the 2024 presidential election, a poll shows of opinion published on Wednesday.

The Aug. 18-23 survey of 1,000 Mexican residents by polling firm Buendia & Marquez for El Universal newspaper showed that 31 percent favored Sheinbaum as the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) presidential candidate, while that 29% chose Ebrard.

Ricardo Monreal, MORENA’s leader in the Mexican Senate, had 11% support, with Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez at 7%.

MORENA, which won a landslide victory under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018, was well ahead of the opposition at the start of the election.

Some 41% of those polled would vote for MORENA in 2024, while the main opposition groups, the centre-right National Action Party (PAN) and the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), each garnered 14% support , according to the survey.

Sheinbaum and Ebrard were seen handily beating possible rivals on a joint PAN-PRI ticket as well as a potential center-left Citizens’ Movement candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, the son of a PRI icon from the same name who was assassinated in 1994.

Lopez Obrador, a popular president, is not allowed by Mexican law to seek re-election. He wants the MORENA candidate to be chosen by a ballot whose parameters remain to be established. The winner is expected to be announced at the end of 2023.

Buendia & Marquez said its survey had a maximum margin of error of 3.53 percentage points.

Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Paul Simao

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