Some are worried about the president, and fear that, even with the newly articulated limits developed by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and the parties, he will jump his traces and do something inelegant on election eve, or more likely during the long post-electoral transition period up to the swearing in of the new administration.

Others worry that Democratic Revolution Party candidate (PRD) Andrés Manuel López Obrador will lose by methods most foul and unjust. They point with justified alarm at the practices now surfacing of induction and coercion of the vote. Still others are worried that López Obrador (AMLO) will lose by just a bit and he and his followers won?t believe it and will challenge the vote. This, it is felt, could lead to a period of political and institutional instability, with unhappy consequences.

As an academic and professional observer, I take this discussion seriously. However, I confess that my experience here over the past 30 years leads me to be somewhat optimistic about what is to happen. That optimism, however, is more of a set of hypotheses that guides our research. Hypotheses can be, and often are, proven wrong. I look forward to participating in post-electoral studies of vote coercion and induction. It is possible to monitor vigilantly the process before and during an election, but it is difficult to study the dynamics until after an election.

My basis for optimism lies in the political culture itself. The popular political culture of Mexico, a mosaic that varies from region to region and social group to social group, has some persistent unifying themes. I count myself fortunate to have stumbled onto a rich area of research during my time here in the country: public opinion and social values from quantitative, qualitative and theoretical perspectives. This is a long discussion now, and probably an even longer one after the election, but my research and related encounters lead me to conclude that popular democratic opinion and values matured before the elite became convinced of the dire necessity of a rapid and bold transition to democracy. In fact, on this score I have found that people have consistently been just a bit ahead of their leaders, and just a bit more sophisticated than those who attempt to manipulate them. I apologize for the democratic romanticism of that statement, but the detailed arguments will have to wait. Let me make the basic point here now by way of assertions.

The basic assertion is that however weak or strong the institutions are in the coming time of tensions, there are elements in the political culture and social values that tend toward supporting an independent opinion and a free vote ? even under great pressures. And pressures there are, and they are huge. Let us not be naïve:

1) Access to media requires money and money is not equitably distributed under the current election laws, nor are the media really neutral public service operations. Media have impact, and intensified, repetitive media at near saturation levels have more impact. But, it is not clear that it is a determining factor in the final instance. What the media pass on tends mostly to shore up existing values, passions and prejudices. It doesn?t change them, except perhaps for time.

2) Government benefit programs are used shamelessly as carrot and stick with poor voters, and no single party has a monopoly on these practices. This is a big question, but our experience in 2000 was that most poor people and other recipients of benefits understood their benefits were entitlements and not conditioned on a forced vote. The National Action Party (PAN) benefited from this popular political sophistication in 2000, even though they are clearly tempted to reverse the logic this year and use benefit programs to push a PAN vote.

3) Powerful authorities are attempting to induce votes with their very authority. Elected executives with bully pulpits, church figures utilizing worship services and other relations with the faithful are being seen in full panoply of attempted influence.

4) And most of all, some retailers in the private sector are pressuring consumers (Wal-Mart with its politically ?stuffed? advertising flyers), and some employers are directly pressuring employees on the job. These include Coppell in the retail sector, and others in tourism, maquila production, textiles, and restaurant service. Employer induction is perhaps even more important to watch than the coercion of the poor through government benefit programs.

The approach to influencing employees directly at the work site has become the declared strategy of one part of the organized private sector. Not all business people are united in this particular strategy, as not all are in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) anymore, nor have all switched to the PAN, nor have they all stayed out of the PRD or its citizen network.

But in point of fact, some important sectors of private industry have a very cynical view of all the parties, and have for a while been trying to figure out how to lead a re-organization of civil society based on the general dissatisfaction with parties, the increasing number of independents, and driving issues like public security where majority decisions on new laws could be crafted in plebiscites or other direct democracy formats. All of this is happening right now. A moral and political tug of war is taking place.

But as Mexicans have shown the stuff to resist media influence on important matters, to understand that benefits are entitlements and not gift-bribes, and to resist the crude blandishments of authority, these ordinary Mexicans are showing respect for themselves above all. Democracy requires capable and respected institutions, of course, but these institutions cannot operate in a vacuum.

Court decisions, however timely, cannot be sure to make up for crooked counting, whether in Florida or in Oaxaca. Court decisions alone, however wise, cannot save a polity that is filled with fraud and impunity.

Only a robust and vibrant political culture that is active and capable of resisting the assaults on the independence of preference and the free exercise of the vote can. I cannot judge the strength of the institutions from my experience. But, I am convinced that the developing political culture will be the critically important factor in pushing the democratic transition forward.

That the political culture is maturing is nonetheless not a guarantee that the resistance to vote coercion and vote induction will be adequate in any given election. And, here is a point in time where serious people advancing serious concerns should be taken seriously.

Dan Lund is President of MUND Américas, a market research and public policy firm in Mexico City. dlund@mundamericas.com