Mexico City mayor narrowly leads ruling party presidential race, poll shows

MEXICO CITY (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 presidential election of 2024, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday.

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

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

MORENA, which swept to a landslide victory under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018, was well ahead of the opposition in the early running for the election.

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

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

Lopez Obrador, a popular president, is barred under Mexican law from seeking re-election. He wants the MORENA candidate to be chosen by a poll whose parameters have yet to be established. The winner is expected to be announced by late 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)