page_title: Vicente Fox
section_title: Approval ratings
hierarchical_section_title: Vicente Fox / Presidency / Public image / Approval ratings
caption_attribution_description: English: Approval/dissaproval ratings of Vicente Fox's administration from January 2001 to November 2006. Data from Gea-Isa Structura. Español: índices de aprobación de la presidencia de Vicente Fox Quesada entre enero de 2001 y Noviembre del 2006. Información obtenida de las encuestas nacionales realizadas por Gea-Isa Structura. &#160;&#160; approve &#160;&#160; disapprove &#160;&#160; unsure
context_page_description: Vicente Fox Quesada is a Mexican businessman and politician who served as the 55th President of Mexico from 1 December 2000 to 30 November 2006.
  Campaigning as a right-wing populist, Fox ran for and was elected president on the National Action Party ticket, which was an opposition party at the time of his election as president. He is currently the Co-President of the Centrist Democrat International, an international organization of center-right political parties.
  Fox was elected President of Mexico in the 2000 presidential election, a historically significant election since it made him the first president elected from an opposition party since the election of Francisco I. Madero in 1910. Fox finished in first place with 42 percent of the vote, thus becoming the first presidential candidate in 71 years to defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
  As president, he mostly followed the neoliberal economic policies that his predecessors from the PRI had adopted since the late 1980s. The first half of his administration saw a further shift of the Federal government to the right, strong relations with the United States and George W.
context_section_description: When Fox took office on 1 December 2000, his approval rating neared 80%, being the first president in 71 years who wasn't a member of the PRI. During the rest of his presidency, his average approval rating was of 53%, while his average disapproval rating was of 40%.
  As seen in the graphic, after taking office the particularly high points of his approval ratings were: 
  August 2002 (58% approval, 39% disapproval, 3% unsure), after Fox accepted to suspend the construction of a new airport in the State of Mexico, which had led to months of protests by local residents who resisted their displacement.
  May 2003 (57% approval, 37% disapproval, 6% unsure), after Fox announced that Mexico would not support the US invasion of Iraq.
  Through out 2006, his approval rating in average was 58% and his average disapproval rating was of 37%, as Fox was on his last year as president and the public focus was on the Presidential elections of that year. The popularity enjoyed by Fox during this period, however, didn't seem to largely benefit the Presidential candidate of his party (PAN) Felipe Calderón, who was controversially declared winner with only 35.9% of the votes, against Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PRD who officially obtained 35.3% of the votes and claimed that the election had been fraudulent.
  While the lowest points of his approval ratings were:
  March 2002 (39% approval, 52% disapproval, 9% unsure), in the wake of the "Comes y te vas" ("Eat and then leave") scandal: during the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development, which took place between 18 and 22 March 2002 in the city of Monterrey and was hosted by Fox, a diplomatic incident occurred when on the night of the 19th Fox received a letter from Cuban leader Fidel Castro informing him that Castro intended to attend the event on the 21st, as he had been invited by the United Nations. Hours after receiving the letter, Fox made a telephone call to Castro in which he expressed his surprise at Castro's intention to attend the conference and scolded him for not telling him earlier. During the call, Fox suggested to Castro that he and the Cuban delegation arrive on the 21st as scheduled to make their presentation, and finally attend a lunch with the other leaders, after which they would return to Cuba. Fox was apparently worried that US President George W. Bush, who was also scheduled to arrive on the 21st, would be offended by Castro's presence at the conference, which is why Fox suggested Castro to leave after the lunch. Castro was outraged at the proposal, and told Fox that in response, he would make the contents of the call -which he was secretly taping- public, which he indeed did. The media quickly caught onto the incident, dubbing it "Comes y te vas" ("Eat and then leave") after Fox's suggestion towards Castro to leave the conference after the aforementioned lunch. The scandal badly hurt the Fox administration, as it made him seem subservient to the United States and it also broke with the Mexican diplomatic tradition of neutrality towards Cuba.
  February 2004 (42% approval, 48% disapproval, 10% unsure), in the midst of scandals surrounding the First Lady Marta Sahagún, who was accused by an article in the Financial Times of using public funds to run her "Vamos México" foundation. In the same month, Sahagún announced that she intended to become the PAN candidate for the 2006 Presidential elections, an announcement that was deeply unpopular within the party.
  Throughout the rest of 2004 and 2005, Fox's approval rating on average was 45% and his average disapproval rate was of 49%. His generalized descent in popularity during this period is attributed to the highly controversial process of Desafuero against Andrés Manuel López Obrador beginning in May 2004, when the Attorney General of the Republic, supported by the Federal Government, accused López Obrador, then Mayor of Mexico City, of disobeying a federal judge's order regarding an expropriation case, and requested both the removal (desafuero) of López Obrador's constitutional legal immunity and hi
caption: Approval ratings of the Fox administration. Data from GEA-ISA Structura.
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