You believe what you wanna believe…

The Inca, who crunches numbers for a living (usually numbers with decimal points in them, and some kind of currency symbol in front) looks at the polling numbers for the Mexican election:

The basic problem is that the pollsters aren’t reliable. This report from one of the best tracking sites out there, Mexico’s ADN Politico, shows (it has a nice graphic, so even if you’re lacking in Spanish language ability you’ll see the main info easily enough) that according to your taste:

• Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI) is either 8% ahead or 21.6% ahead or a couple of other numbers in between.

• Josefina Vázquez Mota (PAN) lies in second spot.

• Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO to his friends and enemies alike (PRD), is in a clear second place so forget all that stuff about Josefina in second will you?

Peña Nieto is continuing to fall in the polls, Vásquez Mota is cratering and Quadri is doing better than I expected, and his party may even keep its registration.  AMLO is trending upwards, but I tend to put more stock in chincanery than polling data. To misquote Stalin, it’s not who is polled, but who does the polling. And, not so much who votes, but who benefits from whoever it is that counts the votes.

My sense is that Peña Neito has the best chance, given that the U.S. government and corporate media (representing international corporate interests) clearly prefer Peña Nieto, but want stability.

In both 1988 and 2006, the U.S. government made it very clear which candidate they preferred, and in the U.S. and corporate media the challengers were painted as a destabilizing leftist and rabble-rouser.  While it is most clear that the elections were stolen (and possibly with U.S. assistance) in 1988, it is still considered suspicious that there was a not coincidental similarity between the 2006 Mexican election and the too  close U.S. Presidential election of 2004… and that some of the same political advisers for the “winning” U.S. candidate in 2004 were working for the presumed winner in the 2006 Mexican election.

While EPN continues to trend downwards, even in the most PRI-friendly polls, a real sign that he is in trouble will be when the U.S. Department of States stops saying “we want a fair election” and start saying “we will work with whatever government is elected” (meaning “We wanted a corporate friendly U.S. client state, but will grin and bear it if we don’t get exactly what we want”) and the corporate media stops putting out nonsense like the Los Angeles’ Times description of street protests as “almost a movement” and starts recognizing them for what they are… a call for change.

The question for the U.S. is which will be more destabilzing… a dubious victory by the PRI, which will be rejected by large segments of the population (especially the well-educated), or one seeking to broaden economic and social development, even at the cost of major shakeups within post-NAFTA corporate structures?