According to a poll by Poligrama, published this Tuesday, 43.4% of Michoacán residents would vote for Grecia Quiroz de Manzo, the widow of Carlos Manzo, the mayor who was assassinated on November 1st in the municipality of Uruapan, as governor of the state. The firm highlighted that this is “a rare phenomenon in the state's recent electoral history: a figure without party affiliation manages to position herself as a leader in a contest traditionally dominated by party structures.” If the elections, scheduled for 2027, were held this Tuesday, Quiroz would lead the preferences with 43.4%, followed by Raúl Morón, from the Morena–Labor Party–Green Party coalition, with 30.5%. In third place would be Alfonso Martínez from the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); and finally Carlos Herrera Tello from the Citizen's Movement, with 5.4%. “The result reflects a citizen mobilization around a figure who has gained visibility in recent weeks, consolidating herself as a symbol of resilience and an emerging political capital in the local context,” the organization stated in a press release. In another hypothetical scenario, that is, if the elections were not today, the results would barely change: Quiroz (42.5%), Morón (28.7%), Martínez (12.2%), Herrera (4.7%), and the figure of Guillermo Valencia for the PRI (3.5%) would appear. The poll was conducted via telephone calls to 1,000 men and women in Michoacán, with a 95% confidence level and a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. Quiroz was appointed mayor of Uruapan last Wednesday by the Congress of Michoacán to take the office left vacant by her husband. In her first mass speech, she asked the attendees to “see her as an instrument of Carlos Manzo” because she is going to “continue his legacy, his principles, and his values.” Manzo, an independent figure without a political party affiliation, was known as “the one with the sombrero.” His campaign was characterized by his firm tone and his frontal rejection of organized crime. On Thursday, the state Prosecutor's Office identified a 17-year-old minor, killed in the attack, as the presumed murderer of the mayor and linked him to organized crime groups. In Uruapan, a city of about 360,000 inhabitants, various criminal organizations operate, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the Knights Templar, the Viagras, United Towns, and the Whites of Troya.
