Campesino Political Participation and Party Identity: Before and after the Emergence of Morena

• In Event: Poster Session: Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) Scholars

Abstract

In 2018, the brand-new party, Morena, won the presidency in its first attempt. Along with winning the presidential election by a landslide, Morena also gained a majority in both chambers of Congress (Hinojosa & Piscopo, 2018). How did a brand-new party beat two coalitions made up of well-established parties? Morena had to be strategic in the ways it appealed to voters. One of the ways in which it appealed to a group was by collaborating with the Plan de Ayala Siglo XXI, an organization for campesinos, the indigenous, and Afro-Mexicans, in an agreement to prioritize campesino demands if Lopez-Obrador is elected (Bartra, 2018). This paper focuses on the campesino political behavior before and after the emergence of Morena to see if campesinos, as an identity group, played a role in Morena’s victory. I use the World Values Survey to identify campesinos, their tendencies to participate in politics, and their party identification in both 2006 and 2018. My findings show that campesinos’ participation in politics increased in 2018 and that they were more likely to identify as morenistas. Thus, I suggest that the campesinos continue to play an impactful role in Mexican politics.

Author

• Adrian Gonzalez, Southwestern University