Dear TW: There are serious numerical anomalies in the debate you are moderating.You may want to check it out.  I will state no opinion on who should or should not, will or will not become President of Mexico in four weeks´ time.  I will nevertheless tell you that there is ample evidence to point out that the vote in this debate has been tampered with.  I am sorry and certainly I believe the political operative who quite possibly has been behind this vote-rigging has to be at least privately reprimanded by his party;The Economist´s staff may want to do a quick investigation with the ample means at their disposal and should they conclude that enough evidence supports the proposition that this shameful event has taken place, a disclaimer on the debate should be added.Pulling this under the rug would be quite counter-productive.  To many people the world over, myself included, this newspaper is an institution worth preserving.Numbers, facts and balanced, insightful analysis are the reasons we have trusted The Economist for decades. It is totally unacceptable for anyone to tarnish its reputation by using old Mexican small-town vote-rigging tactics either to get back at Mrs Josefina Vazquez´s use of The Economist at the first televised presidential debate against Mr Peña Nieto, or as a propaganda tool in the next debate.  Let´s see the numbers.For those unfamiliar with Mexico´s presidential election to be held July 1, 2012,there are four candidates.One of them, from the teacher´s union, has never polled above 5%.The ones with real chances are Mr. Peña Nieto from PRI, who polled formerly as high as 42% and now in the low 30s; Mrs.Josefina Vazquez, from the ruling center-right PAN,now in third and formerly in second place, polling in the high 20s, and Mr. AMLO from the center-left PRD, now in second place, polling in the low 30s but behind Mr Peña Nieto.Some polls speak of a four point spread between the two, others point to a ten point spread.  But the essence of the matter is that all parties as well as the voters they represent are united in this: they are all against PRI and Mr. Peña Nieto ever claiming back the presidency they lost in the year 2000.Thus if Mr Peña Nieto has 34% or 42 % of the votes, by definition that means that either 66% or 58% of all voters are opposed to the proposition that "Mexico is better off under the PRI" The fact that your poll shows 30% of the people opposing your motion instead of the 60-70% indicated by all polls conducted in Mexico is a first sign of trouble.Only the staff at The Economist knows how many votes have originated outside Mexico.If the numbers do not change much once these non-Mexico originated votes have been removed, the idea of vote manipulation gathers strength.  Now, the people most likely to read this newspaper in Mexico, and thus vote in your debate, are naturally highly educated professionals.But you see, the latest poll gruporeforma.blogs.com/encuestas confirms the well-known fact that this demographic is overwhelmingly against the PRI, and has been so for at least 20 years, if not more.The affluent and well-educated are mostly PRD and to a certain extend PAN.In Mexico City, for example, PRD has a twenty-point lead.The actual numbers nationwide are:For voters with only primary education PRI 41%,PRD 30%, PAN 25%.For voters with college education:PRI 28%, PRD 43%, PAN 21%.Therefore, among the people most likely to read TE less than 30% would agree with your proposition, yet your numbers show just the opposite result.  Or do they? Well, actually the opinions stated in your 116 Opening Comments,50 Rebuttal Comments, 541 Opening Recommendations and 286 Rebuttal Recommendations if carefully tabulated and analyzed are totally supportive of those rough numbers of 70% of voter´s negating PRI´s returning to the Presidency and below 30% believing "Mexico is better off under the PRI" The fact that your comments are in statistical agreement with the numbers we would expect from a multitude of polls, while your poll debate numbers are so divergent as to be mirror images of the former is a clear indication of voter fraud.  If we read carefully the 116 Opening Comments we see only 105 are real comments, since people sometimes mistakenly click on to post before they have actually written any comment.About 10% of these 105 indicate no decision on the debate´s proposition, but rather speak of various tangential matters such as the convenience for non-Mexicans to abstain from voting(the opinion of that gentleman who wisely retired to sunny Portugal,SaintMartinian),or to buy beach-front property(YukonDave),teachers saying they will use the debate in their classroom...and a funny Mexican who thinks his country would be better served if it were a colony of Sweden or The Netherlands(recommended by 3)...or another one who says Mexico would have been better off if it had not declared independence from Spain.
WITH a month to go until Mexico’s presidential election, everyone is thinking about politics. Or are they? A new poll asking which news stories have caught people’s attention suggests that campaign hasn’t grabbed everyone.