A Victory without Time to Celebrate: The Challenges for Mexico’s First Female President

In the elections held on Sunday 2 June 2024, Mexicans overwhelmingly expressed their confidence in the political coalition led by the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) to govern the country for a second consecutive six-year term. Claudia Sheinbaum, the winning candidate, defeated her opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez (the candidate from the PRI-PAN-PRD coalition), by 33 points (60% to 27%). In a world where incumbents have limited prospects for re-election (since 2019, only five out of 23 incumbent governments in Latin America have succeeded in obtaining a second term), such a broad electoral victory merits further explanation. Furthermore, due to the high level of electoral support for the coalition’s candidate, the new government will enjoy a broad majority in the Chamber of Deputies and is just two senators short of achieving the qualified majority needed to pass constitutional reforms without negotiating with the opposition parties. In this context, analysts’ fears of a government capable of undermining the pluralism inherent in a democratic regime do not seem so exaggerated. But let’s take it one step at a time.

Causes of the Election Victory

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (often referred to by his initials, AMLO) was the first self-declared leftist administration to come to power following the democratisation process in the 1990s. In this sense, AMLO sought to address the social debt owed to the low-income majority in one of the most unequal democracies in the world.

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Since his election in 2018, approximately 70% of the population has seen improvements in their income, and more than five million people have been lifted out of poverty, thanks to the minimum wage policy and to government social programmes (Inegi, 2024; CONEVAL, 2024).

AMLO combined this increase in social spending with a policy of fiscal austerity, which helped maintain macroeconomic stability and also led to substantial gains for the financial sectors as well as for the producers of consumer goods, given the increased purchasing power of the middle and lower sectors of the economy. Finally, AMLO undertook major infrastructure projects: a second airport for the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico, an oil refinery to reduce fuel imports, the Maya Train to promote economic development in the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Transoceanic Corridor, a rail and road corridor between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico to improve connectivity between oceans. According to the official narrative, these projects will be crucial for less dependency in international trade, and for the economic growth of historically neglected regions of the country.

In summary, despite incredibly high levels of violence from organised crime and continued impunity for its perpetrators, most voters appreciate that, for the first time in decades, the government is strengthening Mexico’s sovereignty and focusing on the welfare of its less privileged majority.

Institutional Risks of a Supermajority Presidency

While the 2024 elections confirmed the direction set in 2018, turbulent times are anticipated. The first concern relates to the real possibility of democratic erosion. Since, in Mexico, the elected legislature takes office a month before the new president’s inauguration, a supermajority Congress will coexist for a month with AMLO’s presidency. This makes it possible for him to enact two constitutional reforms that the previous Congress and the Supreme Court had rejected on several occasions: an electoral reform, which seeks to change how electoral councillors, responsible for organising elections, are appointed, and a judicial reform, which proposes the popular election of judges and magistrates. Both proposals politicise appointments at institutions designed to control power, and thus threaten the checks and balances envisioned in the separation of powers.

Current Political Consequences and Future Questions

In democracy, anyone who tests the limits, eventually finds them. Major financial players and the governments of Canada and the United States, Mexico’s main trade partners, have expressed their disagreement with the government’s ambitions. The persistent depreciation of the peso against the dollar in recent months (see graph 2) and the declines on the Mexican Stock Exchange are unmistakable signs that, in democratic capitalism, when controlling power becomes difficult from within, it is done from the outside, either by civil society or market forces.

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Looking forwards: will Claudia Sheinbaum support a move against control institutions that could create economic turbulence and thus affect public finances? Will the new president be able to distance herself from her mentor and former political boss, to build her own platform without incurring his enmity? The answers to these questions will largely determine the future of her administration. The “narrow corridor” may lead to paradise, but in the short term, it can also be the most challenging to take.