The election period is over and media will start publishing some polls regarding President Pe\u00f1a\u2019s approval rating. Despite the talk of a decrease in popularity, it is worth asking: should the government care about polls, particularly with important decisions regarding future reforms on the way?<\/p>\n
Through the last administrations, when it comes to assuming risk and public responsibilities, Presidential evaluation surveys seem to have created an unwanted impact on past Mexican Heads of State. For instance, Vicente Fox, on his early months in office, just proposing a fiscal reform \u2013 or in simple terms, a general tax increase \u2013 started to take a toll on his popularity. Moreover, by mid 2001, according to a Reforma survey, 53% of those who voted for Fox claimed that they wouldn\u2019t have done it if they had known he would raise taxes. Of course, the reform never came to life, not only for the former President\u2019s lack of ability to agree this and other initiatives but for the seeming terror to lose the so-called \u201cdemocratic bonus\u201d, a result of his 2000 triumph. From that moment on, Fox ended up in a quasi-catatonic lethargy, and slowly started losing the alternation\u2019s political capital, not so much for what he did, but for the clumsiness of what he didn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Felipe Calder\u00f3n also cared a lot about surveys, though he did it with a different approach. Instead of letting himself to be gobbled by polling houses, the last administration decided to play the same game and started disseminating surveys made by the Office of the Presidency. In broad terms, Calder\u00f3n\u2019s approval ratings were kept acceptable during his tenure, even taking drug violence into account, a trait of his administration. As a matter of fact, in 2011, the Chilean organization Latinbar\u00f3metro ranked him 7th out of 18 evaluated Presidents, with a 59% approval rating. However, unlike Fox, Calder\u00f3n\u2019s \u201cgood grades\u201d didn\u2019t manage to get PAN a third term in office. The latter was an example of how a \u201cgood\u201d Presidential evaluation in polls does not guarantee ulterior success to his colleagues \u2013 who are usually identified with continuity, whether they actually enforce it or not. Besides, these ratings weren\u2019t useful on taking Calder\u00f3n\u2019s agenda forward either.<\/p>\n
President Pe\u00f1a has been different from his two predecessors on a single fact: his stand, at least for the moment, has been to satisfy the so-called \u201ccomment-ocracy\u201d more than broad population. Unlike Fox, who wanted to satisfy the general public and created animosity with commentators and opinion leaders, President Pe\u00f1a holds a higher approval amongst pundits and writers than the average Mexican. This has allowed him a less hostile media environment that, in addition to his ability in political operations, has resulted in real legislative results.<\/p>\n
The current Mexican Head of State now faces two of the traditionally most unpopular reforms: energy and taxing. The former has been a historical taboo and the latter directly affects Mexican taxpayers\u2019 pockets. In that way, not only are protests, raging speeches in Congress and flamboyant pleas of analysts to be expected, but also a decrease in the President\u2019s popularity when his initiative\u2019s terms come to light. However, perhaps the worst factor to consider when elaborating public policies is a survey. Even though opposition may use negative polls in its favor, this shouldn\u2019t transform into a government\u2019s self-imposed censorship or a withdrawal of initiatives that have allegedly passed through enough weighting in order to reflect upon the convenience of forging them ahead. The size of a statesman is not always measured by polls: its true evaluation is with history.<\/p>\n
CIDAC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The election period is over and media will start publishing some polls
\nregarding President Pe\u00f1a\u2019s approval rating. Despite the talk of a
\ndecrease in popularity, it is worth asking: should the government care
\nabout polls, particularly with important decisions regarding future
\nreforms on the way?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-3373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-political-analysis","tag-political-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3373"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4353,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions\/4353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}