Too close to call in Mexico

With less than two weeks to go until Mexico’s presidential election, the race is really heating up. Zogby International released a poll yesterday showing conservative (and Vicente Fox-backed) candidate Felipe Calderón (at left) with a razor-thin lead over leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico City’s former mayor (at right). FP‘s profile of López Obrador charted the rise of this populist mayor, who courted both the poor and middle class, initiated housing and education reforms, and took a hard-line against endemic corruption. But he was the early front-runner, and that means voter fatigue may be creeping in. The World Cup has provided a much-desired break from what’s become something of a nasty campaign.

So it could be anyone’s race. PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo claims to have abandoned the old PRI, the party that ran Mexico as a near-dictatorship for more than 70 years. He’s running a close third to Calderón and López Obrador, and the Zogby poll found 13 percent of voters still undecided. In the end, as in many elections, money (translation: last-minute advertising spending) may make all the difference. And there, Calderón may have the upper hand.