> Hmm, well, Julio Huato or anyone else
> - the rhetoric coming from AMLO's camp
> has sounded as if it was the true voice
> of the Mexican masses. These stats
> suggest otherwise. What's up?
AMLO has never claimed that a majority of voters voted for him. A plurality of votes sufficed to win. AMLO claims that a fraud was committed. Votes for him vanished and votes for Calderón were added illicitly. He had serious evidence supporting his claim.
The federal electoral tribunal recognized that the process was biased against AMLO. Yet they stop short of voiding the outcome. They just kept the interpretation of electoral law narrow enough to deny the full recount and to validate the official result with only minor corrections that didn't alter the initial outcome.
I have no way to measure the extent to which forces skeptical of AMLO's candidacy are now supporting his movement. While it's very possible (as the NYT suggests) that AMLO is losing some middle-class followers, I have some anecdotal evidence suggesting that AMLO's mass following from the left has increased.
I'll give examples I'm most familiar with. First, a mass organization with thousands of hardworking, very disciplined activists all over the country, that called its followers to vote for the PRI (Roberto Madrazo) on 7/2, is now supporting AMLO in its public statements. Apparently, they are not yet joining the mass actions organized by the Coalición. That may take a longer while, since they have old grievances with Alejandro Encinas, the current PRD mayor of Mexico City, who supports AMLO. But there's an incentive now to work things out. So I wouldn't be surprised if they unite behind AMLO.
On the uber-leftist side of the spectrum, most radical student-based organizations in Mexico called people to abstain on 7/2. But now things are different. At least in the UNAM, student-based organizations are now openly supporting AMLO. Alejandro Valle (a PEN-L member) could say more about this. But that's what I can gather from here.
It's true that some old leftists who supported Cárdenas in 1988 are alienated from the PRD and still hold grudges. One case is Adolfo Gilly, and old Trotskyist who has never been able to organize anything that lasts, but who writes well and thinks he's the incarnation of proletarian purity. He wrote a nasty anti-AMLO column in La Jornada just a couple of days ago. He defended his position and also covered Cárdenas and the sub Marcos. But even him ended up his article insinuating that the logic of things is likely to get them all closer to AMLO's movement in the future. He seems to be resentful because AMLO bypassed him and rather sought some cadres from the old, corrupt PRI to join the Coalición.
I may sound "idealist" but it seems to me that people underestimate the power of being morally right. To weaken and stop him, the powers that be have thrown at AMLO everything they had. So, yes, the media campaign lowered the voters' turnout and intimidated some that may have voted for him. Two years ago, he had over 60% popularity among likely voters and that obviously fell by 7/2. But the fight couldn't have been more unequal. And people register that in their heart of hearts. And the fact that he's not bending is turning him into a larger than life political figure.
If the dynamics in my family is any guide, then those who supported Calderón are feeling defensive and even a bit ashamed of themselves. (Those of my siblings who voted for Calderón wanted a full recount and are willing to admit that a fraud very likely happened.) If AMLO has roughly one third of the voters behind him, that is now a galvanized third, in contrast with the self-doubting third of Calderón's backers.
Now, the third that voted for the PRI (a lot of rural poor voters) doesn't have anywhere else to go but to split. In the worst case scenario, that third will split half and half. So, AMLO may already be speaking for about half of Mexicans, if not more. And that's the half that is sure to be right, politically and morally. The righteousness of this mass anger is a very potent force, as I'm sure we'll see in the future.
Short answer: As we speak, AMLO may not have a majority of the masses behind him. (And this fact informs the choice of strategy and tactics.) But the situation is fluid.
Julio