Significance: The PRD is in disarray. Less than five years ago the party vied with the right-wing opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) party for the title of main opposition to the traditional Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI); now it does not even look like the biggest party on the Left of Mexico’s political spectrum. The PRD has been locked in a spiral of decline since the decision by its twice former presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to leave the party and form his own personalist outfit, Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena), soon after his defeat by the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto in the 2012 presidential election. The departure of López Obrador, who had grave differences with the PRD’s dominant faction, Nueva Izquierda (NI), commonly referred to as ‘Los Chuchos’, led to a steady stream of defections to Morena. López Obrador’s surge into pole position in the polls ahead of the 2018 presidential election has prompted serious concern within the PRD that not only will there be further defections to Morena but that it could also displace the PRD as Mexico’s principal political force on the Left.
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