To fight criminal organizations effectively, governments require support from significant segments of society. Citizen support provides important leverage for executives, allowing them to continue their policies. Yet winning citizens' hearts and minds is not easy. Public security is a deeply complex issue. Responsibility is shared among different levels of government; information is highly mediated by mass media and individual acquaintances; and security has a strong effect on peoples' emotions, since it threatens to affect their most valuable assets-life and property. How do citizens translate their assessments of public security into presidential approval? To answer this question, this study develops explicit theoretical insights into the conditions under which different dimensions of public security affect presidential approval. The arguments are tested using Mexico as a case study.T his study analyzes the impact that citizens' assessments of security issues have on presidential approval. Specifically, it delves into the specific conditions that prompt citizens to punish or reward the chief executive. Little is known about the impact public security issues have on presidential approval. The bulk of the literature has focused on analyzing the impact of the economy and foreign affairs on an executive's job approval. 1 The relationship between crime and performance evaluations has usually been the domain of local politics. However, due to the significant increase in crime and violence in many countries around the globe, the responsibility for public security has partially shifted away from local governments toward the national sphere of government.

Why do drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes prey on the communities in which they operate but sometimes provide assistance to these communities? What explains their strategies of extortion and co-optation toward civil society? Using new survey data from Mexico, including list experiments to elicit responses about potentially illegal behavior, this article measures the prevalence of extortion and assistance among DTOs. In support of our theory, these data show that territorial contestation among rival organizations produces more extortion and, in contrast, DTOs provide more assistance when they have monopoly control over a turf. The article uncovers other factors that also shape DTOs’ strategies toward the population, including the degree of collaboration with the state, leadership stability and DTO organization, and the value and logistics of the local criminal enterprise.

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In this paper we test different hypotheses that reflect some of the most common sources of estimation error in pre-election polls. We test for questionnaire design effects, sampling effects, 1 This paper reflects the discussions and ideas of several professionals who took part in various meetings with the Federal Elections Institute (IFE) since October 2010, when IFE organized a conference in Cocoyoc, Mexico, to discuss why most pre-election polls were wrong in their estimations for several state-level governor races that year. In that conference, Michael Traugott, a past President of WAPOR, called for a collective effort to design a more formal study of estimation error and its causes. The proposal was backed by IFE councilors and by representatives of the main survey research associations in the country: AMAI (the leading market research association in Mexico), the national representation of WAPOR, and the Consejo de Investigadores. The authors would like to thank the initiative and comments of several participants in those meetings: IFE councilors Palabras clave: encuestas preelectorales en México, fuentes de error en las estimaciones, diseños experimentales, efectos de la espiral de silencio, metodologías de encuestas.

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