Referendum in Mexico

By: Anastasiia Andreeva
Oct 04, 2021


On August 1st, 2021, Mexico held a nationwide referendum on investigating former presidents for corruption, backed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The turnout was extremely low – slightly more than 7% of eligible voters. 

Seeking to untangle this, this Graph of the Week shows trends on three indicators in Mexico. V-Dem’s person of the leader indicator represents the extent to which the political leader of the country is portrayed as having extraordinary attributes valued by society. Both that personalization of politics and polarization in politics rapidly increased in 2018 when the current president took office. The ruling AMLO’s populist campaign set those who support the status quo against the anti-corrupt establishment camp. In that light, the most recent referendum could be understood as AMLO’s attempt to mobilize his electoral base although it failed.