Mexico election diary: Inside the Estado de México

The Economist: ONE of the most frequently heard comments about Enrique Peña Nieto, the front-runner in Mexico’s presidential race, is that in spite of his fame, no one really knows much about the man beneath the carefully styled quiff. I’m not sure that’s true. Last year Mr Peña finished a six-year term in charge of the biggest state in Mexico. The Estado de México, or Mexico state, has a population of 15m, making it bigger than Guatemala and not far off the size of Chile. His time in charge there ought to offer plenty of clues about how he would manage the country if he wins July 1st’s election.

Yesterday I went to Mexico state to get an idea of whether Mr Peña had made a decent job of running the place. We’ll have a write-up in the print edition later, but in the meantime I recommend a good table in this month’s Nexos magazine, which functions as a kind of scorecard for Mr Peña’s time in office between 2005 and 2011. Alongside it is a similar one for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mr Peña’s closest rival, who was the mayor of Mexico City between 2000 and 2006. Read more.