Morning Consult Counter/Consensus: Global Political Risk Briefing, June 13, 2024

1. Mexico (Counter)

How AMLO can you go? As expected, Mexico’s incumbent MORENA party romped to victory, bagging around 60% of the vote, and President López Obrador’s chosen successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, easily clinched the presidency. There is no question that Sheinbaum and MORENA have a strong popular mandate via Mexico’s charismatic incumbent, whose net approval is consistently among the highest we track. 

But despite many of the immediate headlines focusing on the novelty of Mexico’s first woman (and Jewish) president, there are some concerning aspects of MORENA’s victory that bear watching. 

First, Andres Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, is a textbook populist with a penchant for personally attacking opponents and challenging institutions in the name of representing the will of the people. Sheinbaum has vowed to push ahead with her mentor’s proposed reforms, including the elimination of several independent regulators and a controversial judicial reform that would make supreme court judges popularly elected. With a supermajority in the lower house and a near supermajority in the upper house, the feasibility of the moves has roiled markets. 

Second, Mexico ranks 8th among the 25 countries where we currently track global political polarization, and is notably the only country where those claiming to belong to the far left significantly outnumber those claiming to belong to the far right. High polarization favoring the left helps explain the “us versus them” rhetoric employed by AMLO and Sheinbaum and MORENA’s success in portraying its work as a battle against entrenched elites.

For now, Sheinbaum is deeply in the shadow of her predecessor and benefactor, so we expect a strong push to implement his pet reforms in the next six months. A lifelong leftist and respected scientist, she may ultimately be able to chart her own path as her single six-year term wears on, or she may discover her own populist instincts. Either way, her handling of security and migration issues will be key in determining whether she gains her own legitimacy or remains on AMLO’s coattails. 

2. France (Consensus)

It’ll be a snap. While most Europe watchers — including us — expected France’s National Rally to do well in European Parliamentary elections, President Macron’s decision to call snap elections as a result of Marine Le Pen’s party gaining 31% of the vote was undoubtedly a surprise. Macron is probably hoping to emulate Spain’s center-left Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who managed to hold on to his job when spooked Spaniards shied away from supporting far-right Vox in a national contest. But France is not Spain, and the trends in our data do not favor Macron’s bold gambit. 

First of all, Macron himself is deeply unpopular. And while the presidency won’t come up for a vote until 2027, Macron’s performance will implicitly be on the ballot. His approval has been underwater since the last French parliamentary elections in June 2022, falling to its current low, a level first reached during popular backlash against Macron’s push to raise the retirement age in early 2023. 

This deep dissatisfaction is also reflected in French adults’ assessment of whether their country is headed in the right direction or is on the wrong track. Despite already being in deeply negative territory, it has managed to slide to new lows around -65 in recent months. 

Per our data, when asked which French political party holds views closest to their own, 25% of French adults cite the National Rally, while over 30% say no party reflected their views. This holds good and bad news for Macron and his Renaissance party. 

The good news is that the National Rally’s share here is somewhat below the 31% vote share it garnered in the recent E.U. Parliament elections, buoying the theory that a fair amount of its popular support could have come from protest voters who might balk at supporting it in a national contest. The bad news is that Macron’s party is faring worse by any measure. 

Monday morning quarterbacking notwithstanding, Macron may not have had much of a choice. With his party’s support lagging behind the competition, his own approval at a low point, and French adults’ outlook on the country’s trajectory going from bad to worse, he may have decided that calling for snap elections was the best of a series of bad options. Bonne chance!

3. Pakistan (Counter)

Yes we Khan. Cricketer turned opposition leader Imran Khan’s popularity is unfazed by his legal troubles. In the leadup to Pakistan’s Feb. 8 elections, Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of mishandling classified information. Voters went on to hand his PTI party a stronger than expected showing despite Khan himself being barred from standing for office, and the PTI remains the most popular party in Pakistan. 

On June 3, a Pakistani high court overturned his previous conviction for leaking state secrets. While we saw a very small dip in popular support for the PTI in the week before the court announced the acquittal, it immediately rebounded in the following days.  

For the time being, Khan remains in prison on unrelated charges. But Khan and the PTI’s teflon popularity are a headache for Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose Nawaz party only eked out a victory by forming a coalition with the PPP. Pakistan is meanwhile beset by external quandaries, including pressure to attend the Ukraine peace summit, a debt-laden “friendship” with China and an increasingly assertive India. 

The February election result and continuing popular support for Khan and the PTI reveal a population that is dissatisfied with the status quo — including the military’s support for Sharif — and is increasingly willing to show it. While the military has historically reigned supreme in Pakistan, and is largely viewed as facilitating Khan’s current predicament, we expect popular unrest to remain a thorn in its side to a larger degree than when Khan himself was in office.

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