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Public Opinion of the Economy and the President among Mexico City Residents: The Salinas Sexenio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Andrés Villarreal
Andrés Villarreal*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Abstract

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Because of the prominence of the president in the Mexican political system, public opinion of the executive is a particularly important political indicator. Two models of public opinion are used here to explain changes in President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's approval rate from 1990 to 1994. The economic-performance model assumes that approval was based on public perception of trends in the economy. The statistical analysis shows that individuals' perceptions of economic performance had a strong positive effect on their opinions of the president. But basic economic indicators such as inflation, the real value of wages, and the level of unemployment are found to explain only partially Mexico City residents' opinions of the economy. The policy-initiatives model assumes that approval of President Salinas was based on public opinion of his economic policy initiatives. Citizens' approval of Salinas's economic initiatives was found to affect their opinions of the president substantially. Because many of these policy initiatives, such as NAFTA, had no immediate direct impact on the economic condition of the country, I conclude that Salinas's extraordinary popularity was largely due to the expectations that these initiatives created.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , 1999 , pp. 132 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

The initial phase of this research was funded by a grant from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC-MEXUS). I would like to thank Peter Smith, Daniel Hallin, and William Parish as well as the anonymous LARR referees for helpful comments on previous drafts. I would also like to thank Ricardo de la Peña and Rosario Toledo of the Gabinete de Estudios de Opinión (GEO) for sharing their data with me.

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