Monday, November 01, 2010

Calderón's drug policies

In my post from Friday, Pablo from The Cross Culturalist pointed to this poll in Milenio to counter the argument that Felipe Calderón's anti-drug policies are unpopular.  Here is the relevant question:


Aprueba o desaprueba la lucha contra el narcotráfico que se está dando ahora en el país?

My translation: Do you approve or disapprove of the fight against narcotrafficking that the country is currently undergoing?

With that question, 69.3 percent approve and 24.7 disapprove.  So if 69.3 percent approve, why is the Calderón administration so concerned that no one approves?  At least for this particular poll, I would argue that the question is too vague to tell us much.  That an overwhelming percentage believe "the fight" is a good thing is not necessarily an indicator that "the specific measures of the Calderón administration" are equally popular.

Otherwise we have a situation where a president grossly underestimates the popularity of one of his major policies. That, as you might guess, is not very common.

2 comments:

Pablo 8:48 PM  

Greg, thanks for pointing that out. I get the sense also that Calderon is not quite that popular.

Just a minor note: I am not from Aguachile. My blog is at www.thecrossculturalist.blogspot.com. And I actually saw that news item on Bloggings By Boz.

Anyway, I love your blog. I try to hit it once every two or three days. Thanks for posting.

Greg Weeks 9:13 PM  

My apologies! I looked too quickly at the list of blogs. It is now corrected.

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