By Lilia Lopez

This month´s update on the Mexican Presidential Race

PRD   
After weathering a surprise drop of support in major public opinion surveys last month, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has regained a slight lead according to a new poll of Mexican voters published on May 29. The poll, released by Mexican daily, Milenio Diario, reports the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) candidate to have 34 percent of voters, a one percent increase from the beginning of May. The other leading candidate, Felipe Calderon of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) has dropped to second place with 33 percent.  
But despite regaining an apparent lead, these latest numbers do not give López Obrador a clear path to victory. According to Milenio Diario, the poll represents the views of only 1,000 random voters and has a 3.2 percent margin of error.   

PAN 
Felipe Calderon had the lead in this heated race but has it slipped from his hands? According to Milenio Diario it might be gone (see brief above), but with just 34 days until election-day, anything can happen.    
After more than two years of the presidential race dominated by López Obrador, Calderon finally surged ahead in the polls in April and May of this year. Many analysts attribute his rise to a barrage of anti-Obrador television spots released in late March. The ads link the former mayor of Mexico City to controversial Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and also claim that an Obrador presidency would spell disaster for Mexico. Calderon has outspent all his competitors on media advertising and makes fewer public appearances than López Obrador. According to Dan Brown, a pollster interviewed by The Economist, this makes Calderon very susceptible to an advertising counterpunch from his rival’s camp.  
In other party news, current President Vicente Fox held a national televised address last Monday to assure voters that the upcoming elections will be cleanest ever. For a good part of the campaign, the PRD has accused Fox of meddling by producing government funded television ads promoting the PAN and warning voters of the dangers of “populism” in reference to Obrador. Mexican law, theoretically prohibits outgoing presidents from getting involved in the campaign to replace them.   

PRI 
While the PRD and PAN are fighting for first place, Roberto Madrazo is all but out of the race. While Madrazo’s public support rose from 28 to 30 recent in a recent poll, it doesn’t appear to be enough to get him back in the race. The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has gone from having a strong-hold (some might say strangle-hold) on Mexican politics to having little more than a long-shot at victory in these 2006 elections.    

The party is in such disarray that some members began calling for PRI voters to transfer their support from Madrazo to López Obrador in order to deter a Calderon victory. On Monday May 22, the PRI began the offical process to expel such members, such as Sen. Manuel Bartlett a former interior secretary for the PRI.  In response to these recent developments Madrazo told supporters at a campaign stop the same day, “I will get the loyal vote… With them we are going to win and we will complement the loyal vote with a good part of the indecisive vote because ... this is atypical, this is not the normal electoral process." 

Sources: Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Economist, San Jose Mercury News