Peña Nieto

According to the official results, Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI) won the election with 38% of the vote, followed by  Andrés Manuel López Obrador with 32% of the vote, followed by Josefina Vázquez Mota with 25% and then Gabriel Quadri with 2.5%.  However, the TEPJF is still ruling on the irregularities which the PRD found in the election, namely allegations of voter fraud, the use of more resources than was allowed, manipulation of polls, more and more favorable television coverage and negligence by electoral authorities. The Tribunal’s final decision should emerge by the end of the first week in September. The youth movement YoSoy132 has continued protesting the election and the role of the media, and the PAN has accepted the loss and said that their party needs to be re-vamped.

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Why the PRI returned to power after 12 years and the electoral results:

Associate Director Eric Olson suggests in an interview with The Texas Tribune that the question on most people’s minds was whether a victory by the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto could overcome his party’s tainted legacy and “usher in a new era with a reformed PRI capable of tackling the issues of corruption and inefficient government, security and violence, and economic under-performance that have vexed other parties as well.” He also addressed the lack of excitement surrounding this election, telling NPR that even the devastating drug war of the last six years wasn’t number one on the mind of voters, though highlighting in The Huffington Post the surge in interest with the #YoSoy132 student movement.

Director Andrew Selee argues that many Mexicans believed the PRI to be capable of delivering results: “they want to bring them back because they think they might be able to do something about the violence in the country and they might be able to do something to make the economy more dynamic,” he told NBC Latino.

He also explained to The Washington Times the two reasons why the PRD’s presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was unlikely to repeat the call for the massive protests of 2006:  “One is that the electoral institute overseeing the voting is more credible this time around. The other is that if he loses, many people on the left will see him as the past and not the future of their movement.” Selee also talked to The New York Times about Peña Nieto’s efforts to bring together the younger and older generations within the PRI.

Senior Advisor Duncan Wood tells The Washington Post that “Calderon’s problem is that in the last 12 years, Mexico has changed, it has made progress, but it has not been enough progress. The change is not profound. The life of the average Mexican is not sufficiently better.” He also writes in a special to BBC News that the campaigns themselves failed to alter the electoral landscape.

Board member Carlos Heredia highlights the PRI’s perceived ability to deal with organized crime and the problems that perception brings in an interview with The Washington Post.

Also in The Washington Post, board member Lorenzo Meyer suggests the PAN’s loss is due in part to some “unremarkable” advisors to President Calderón.

On the future of security policy:

Director Andrew Selee stresses in an interview with The Dallas Morning News (subscription required) that the incoming government “may do things that will be more along the lines of changing the nuances [of security policy] than changing the overall strategy. There might be some tweaking of the strategy here or there, more for cosmetic reasons, but I see no major abrupt changes in strategy. My guess is that security is so important to both countries that neither government will do anything that would jeopardize that.” In The Houston Chronicle, he adds that:

“There have been suspicions that the PRI would renew its old ways in dealing with drug traffickers and jettison the growing security cooperation relationship with the United States. This seems unlikely to happen, and the new government will almost certainly want to deepen cooperation against drug traffickers. That in turn will deepen reliance on the United States.”

In CBS News, Selee says a key question is how the PRI will handle local-level corruption. In The Houston Chronicle, he argues that voters have already punished the party in this election for some of this alleged corruption in “three states where citizens suspect their local authorities of complicity or, in some cases, grave omissions with managing the rise of the Zetas.”

The Houston Chronicle also cites a report by Associate Director Eric Olson that the incoming Mexican government “could target the most violent trafficking groups. By targeting groups like Los Zetas that have expanded their criminal activities into kidnapping and extortion, the government could punish these groups in the hopes that cartels in Mexico would compete to be perceived as the least violent and thereby avoid federal attack.”

Olson tells The Christian Science Monitor that Mexico will need to put more resources in the judicial system as well: “As long as prosecutions are ineffective, slow, and corrupt, it affects so many areas of life in Mexico.”

Board member Diana Negroponte suggests in The Telegraph that a pact with organized crime is impossible, even if certain groups favored one:

“Many people are going to vote for [Mr Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party] because they remember fondly the stable days when governments worked quietly with the cartels and made side deals. But who do you make a deal with now? The lieutenants are more fragmented and harder to negotiate with.”

Board Member Roderic Camp talks with The Houston Chronicle about the lesson of the incorrect arrest claim of the a drug cartel leader’s son: the paper writes that “unfortunately, the Mexican Marines have fallen into the same trap as the Mexican attorney general’s office, failing to positively identify a suspect before parading him before the cameras. Hopefully, they will institute proper vetting mechanisms and take their time announcing arrests in the future.”

On potential economic developments: 

Senior Advisor Duncan Wood weighs in on NPR’s Marketplace on the challenges of improving competitiveness and the healthy amount of government involvement, and writes in an op-ed with Jeremy Martin that energy and economic reform will be the crucial challenges for the next administration. Wood told The Houston Chronicle that while there was hope for energy reform, the lack of an absolute majority in Congress for the PRI, he explained to Bloomberg and The Houston Chronicle, complicates the process and will demand skillful negotiations. Wood argues in Reforma (subscription required) that the key moment for this reform will be during the transition period.

Program Associate Christopher Wilson also spoke with Reforma and stressed that a key focus in the first 100 days of the next administration will be to address competitiveness.

The Washington Post cites a report by board members Luis de la Calle and Luis Rubio that argues that “expectations for modernization, transparency and stability will be frustrated if the next president cannot reform Mexico’s deep-rooted oligopolic economic structure and break the gridlock that has stymied reform in such areas as labor, taxes and energy.”

On the impact on U.S.-Mexico relations:

Director Andrew Selee writes in a special to CNN that:

“The United States has a substantial interest in seeing Mexico’s democracy flourish, its security situation improve and its economy grow. […] Deepening our partnership with Mexico is key to the future of U.S. security and prosperity. There will be legitimate doubts about the new government in Mexico, but there will be even more pressing reasons to move forward in strengthening the relationship with our neighbor next door.”

Selee also notes, in an interview with CNN, that “the U.S.-Mexico relationship has now matured to a point where changes in party and personality matter less than they used to. This is a country that matters enormously for the U.S., and for the first time, perhaps, what happens in the elections won’t change [that relationship] much.”

Board member Jeffrey Davidow writes in a special to The San Diego Union Tribune that:

“Mexico has changed in recent years, particularly since the advent of a competitive  democracy marked by Fox’s election. But as yet, the fruits of those changes have been insufficient. The United States prospers when Mexico advances. A wealthier, more efficient Mexico with a more competent government is very much in our own interests.”

Board member Javier Treviño tells The Dallas Morning News that “we need to return some kind of framework to better manage the relationship and improve channels of communication. Peña Nieto doesn’t want to close the door, but he does want to better manage the opening and closing of that door.”

Board member James Taylor emphasizes in The Austin-American Statesman the need for “Mexico’s government, businesses and civil society organizations need to join together to tell the also real story of improbable success in the face of security challenges and rising economic prosperity despite tough times.”

On the future of Mexican democracy:

Program Associate Christopher Wilson tells Al-Jazeera that Mexico has changed dramatically as a society, and so the PRI, whether dominated by the younger generation or older operatives, will face a different country than prior to 2000 and be unable to return to the old-style. That said, he tells France 24 that Peña Nieto’s cabinet appointments will suggest “which PRI shows up to govern.”

Director Andrew Selee concurs on the changed society, adding to CNN that:

“What’s changed on the national stage is that Mexican citizens have different expectations for their federal government that are going to force the PRI to govern in a different way than it did 20 years ago. Then, the PRI was really a party that included all of Mexico, that had a broad patronage network and tolerated little dissent outside of the party. And the PRI today is going to have to deal with opposition parties that have tasted power, an active citizenry that expects to be involved in major policies decisions and a very vigilant press that will report on everything that happens.”

Board Member Enrique Krauze agrees in an op-ed for The Washington Post, arguing that while the PRI may not have become a “modern party:”

“The president now exercises only his prescribed constitutional powers. We have a multi-party congress and an independent Supreme Court. A transparency law has reduced free-wheeling corruption at the federal level. There is absolute freedom of expression. The government no longer organizes and controls elections; they are regulated by a federal institute of citizens. The Bank of Mexico is autonomous. In short, a return to the days of the ‘perfect dictatorship’ is impossible.”

Associate Director Eric Olson tells The Daily Beast that the challenge for Peña Nieto “will [be] to show that the PRI he will lead will be democratic and honest, [since] there are a lot of doubts about that.”

Board member Luis Rubio writes in Nexos that the PRI will also need to demonstrate that it can govern with quality and not only with execution.

Board member Rossana Fuentes-Berain says that “democracy is a contact sport” and that voters should both demand accountability and play by democratic rules after the election, in a special on Televisa’s “Noticiero con Joaquin López-Doriega.”

Board member Rafael Fernández de Castro suggests to The Dallas Morning News that “the next six years will be fundamental for Mexicans not to give up, not to lose hope or their will, because the last 12 years have been about experimenting, and the experiment hasn’t gone as planned.”

Board member Sergio Aguayo argues for a degree of skepticism about electoral process and ways to improve it.

López Obrador

Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejected the victory of rival Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico’s presidential election as “fraudulent.” ”We cannot accept a fraudulent result, nobody can accept that,” Lopez Obrador said at a press conference in the capital, claiming that Sunday’s vote was “filthy.”

Lopez Obrador claimed the PRI spent millions of pesos buying votes for their candidates, and that the news media heavily favored Pena Nieto and the PRI. ”We will provide evidence for these claims and will file appropriate legal action,” said Lopez Obrador, emphasizing that he and his supporters will first scrutinize the balloting information with election officials.

In 2006, when Lopez Obrador ran for president and lost by less than one percent, he cried foul and organized protests that paralyzed Mexico City for more than a month.

Will he do it again? “We’re going to wait,” he told reporters, decrying the “national embarrassment” of Sunday’s vote. Read the rest of this entry »

1.- The PRI won decisively but did not get the mandate it wanted.

PRI presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto appears to have won the election by around 6%, which is a decisive victory over the other contenders.  However, he only won around 38% of the vote, roughly what President Calderon won in 2006 and far less than most polls prior to the election predicted.  It’s a clear victory but not a resounding one.  Early results appear to suggest that the PRI will have a majority in the lower House but perhaps not in the Senate. Unquestionably a good night for the PRI and for Pena Nieto, but not the knock-out most of the party faithful expected.

2.- The PRD lost the presidency but showed that the Left has mobilizing power.

Most political analysts had left PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for dead at the start of the campaign; he couldn’t seem to even reach 20% in the opinion polls.  All signs are that he finished above 30% and won a significant majority in Mexico City, the country’s political and cultural center, and large pluralities in several other states (including several that were unlikely wins for a leftist candidate, such as Puebla, Quintana Roo, and Tlaxcala).  The PRD won the mayor’s office in Mexico City again with over 60% of the vote, and took the governorship in Morelos and probably Tabasco.  Overall, it wasn’t a bad night for the Mexican Left, even though they lost the biggest prize, and it suggests that the PRD and its allied parties may have more resonance in Mexican society than many analysts believe.

3.- The PAN couldn’t overcome its internal divisions and doubts about its performance.

The PAN had a rough night, winning only a quarter of the vote nationally.  The party continues to have significant bastions of support around the country, and did far better in Senate races, but the poor third place performance appeared to confirm that Mexicans are disappointed in the direction the country is going and unimpressed with the idea of continuing with the PAN for another six years.  Internal divisions within the party clearly played a major role in the party’s collapse in this election as well.

4.- All the political leaders rose to the occasion in unexpected and highly positive ways.

Mexican politicians are usually criticized for their self-serving leadership style, but on election night, all of the major players rose to the occasion in unexpected — and very heartening — ways.  Josefina Vazquez Mota conceded defeat in a particularly gracious and eloquent speech early in the night.  President Felipe Calderon called Enrique Pena Nieto to congratulate him and offered a smooth transition in his public address.  Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who most thought would take to the streets claiming fraud, gave short remarks saying that he would wait for the final results on Wednesday before deciding what to do — almost certainly taking any air out of a possible resistance campaign by his supporters.  And Enrique Pena Nieto was somber and thoughtful rather than triumphalist, praising President Calderon and all his opponents, recognizing the concerns of the student movement, and calling for action to move Mexico forward.  It was a surprising display of maturity by all sides in a contentious election.

5.- Mexico will continue to be a competitive democracy with significant checks and balances.

Mexicans voted to give the presidency back to the PRI, a party that has pledged to get things done, but they also gave the PRD and the PAN a significant voice in the future of the country.  The PRI takes over knowing that it has to respond to the doubts of the students who protested Pena Nieto’s campaign and the more than six out of every ten Mexicans who didn’t vote for Pena Nieto.  At the same time, the PAN and PRD will have to learn to be responsible opposition parties, trying to shape the country’s future and hold the PRI accountable.  This is a win for Mexican democracy and for de facto checks and balances in the political system.  And perhaps the most important figure of the evening is this: 62% of Mexicans voted, a historic high point, which means that politicians know that citizens will be watching what they do.

Enrique Peña Nieto is the projected winner of Mexico’s presidential election, according to a quick count by election officials.

Representative samples from polling stations throughout the country gave Peña Nieto the lead, with between 37.93% and 38.55% of votes, the Federal Election Institute said.

The projected victory for Peña Nieto marks a triumphant return to power for the PRI, which controlled Mexico’s presidency for more than 70 years, until the election of the National Action Party’s Vicente Fox in 2000.

“I take with great emotion and a great sense of commitment and full responsibility the mandate Mexicans have granted me today,” Peña Nieto told supporters, standing at a podium with a sign that said “Mexico won.”

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Peña Nieto’s closest competitor, said Sunday night that he wasn’t ready to concede. ”The last word has yet to be said,” the former Mexico City mayor told supporters in the capital late Sunday. An official individual vote tally begins Wednesday. Lopez Obrador trailed by 6 percentage points in the Sunday night quick count, which projected he garnered between 30.90% and 31.86% of the vote.

Ruling party candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota was trailing in exit polls and the quick count projection, which said she received between 25.10% and 26.03% of votes.

Gabriel Quadri of the New Alliance, who lagged far behind in polls before and after the election with less than 3% of votes, praised Mexico’s election authorities Sunday night. ”We have very solid, democratic institutions,” he said.

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The final polls before Sunday’s presidential election find frontrunner Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI-PVEM), who has led throughout the campaign, to have an advantage of 10 to 17 percentage points over his nearest rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD-PT-MC). Most polls find López Obrador leading Josefina Vázquez Mota (PAN) by around five points; the fourth candidate, Gabriel Quadri (PANAL), trails the others by over twenty percent. Support for both Peña Nieto and López Obrador has risen slightly in the final weeks of the campaign, and the percentage of undecided voters has declined to its lowest point.

A wide margin?

Three new polls find Peña Nieto ahead by more than 15 percent. Peña Nieto leads by 17.1 percent in the new poll from El Universal/The Dallas Morning News/Buendía y Laredo (June 22-24), with 45 percent of the effective vote (excluding non-respondents). López Obrador polls 27.9 percent and Vázquez Mota 24.4 percent. Quadri has 2.7 percent support. The percentage of undecided voters is 12.4 percent.

The El Sol de México/Parametría poll (June 18-23) finds Peña Nieto ahead by slightly less, at 15.2 percent. The PRI candidate polls 43.9 percent, while López Obrador polls 28.7 percent. Vázquez Mota is five percentage points behind, with 23.6 percent support, and Quadri polls 3.8 percent. Nineteen percent of those surveyed did not give a preference.

Similarly, in the Mitofsky poll (June 22-24), Peña Nieto’s effective lead is 15.1 percent. He polls 44.5 percent, compared to López Obrador’s 29.4. As in the Parametría poll, Vázquez Mota appears more than five percentage points behind the PRD candidate, with 24.1 percent. Quadri polls 2.0 percent. Fourteen percent of those surveyed did not respond, the lowest percentage in Mitofsky polls from the campaign.

A closer race?

Two other polls reflect a slightly tighter race. According to SDP Noticias/Covarrubias (June 21-24), Peña Nieto leads by 11.0 percentage points: he polls 41.0 percent compared to López Obrador’s 30.0 percent and Vázquez Mota’s 26.0 percent. Support for Quadri is at three percent, and only six percent were non-respondents.

Lastly, Reforma (June 21-24) finds Peña Nieto’s advantage to be ten percent, leading López Obrador with 41 percent support compared to the PRD candidate’s 31 percent. Vázquez Mota trails at 24 percent, and Quadri with four percent. In this poll, 19.2 percent did not give their preference and 2.1 percent said they would annul their ballots.

For a visual tracking of the standings over the three-month-long campaign, see ADN Político’s graph of surveys from ten major polling companies. For more analysis, see “The Polls” on The Mexico Institute’s Elections Guide.

Less than a week remains before the July 1 election: Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI-PVEM) leads by a steady 12 to 16 percent and his party looks likely to claim up to five of the current gubernatorial races. New studies suggest this support is largely due to economic voting, not security concerns, and the candidates and their foreign policy advisors address their policy positions in two sessions.

Voter intentions

In the most recent polls, Peña Nieto continues to lead by 12 to 16 percent among intended voters. As we discussed on June 21 in our weekly poll wrap-up, all but one poll finds Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD-PT-MC) in second place and Josefina Vázquez Mota (PAN) in third, with two to four percentage points between them. Gabriel Quadri (PANAL) polls at two to four percent.

Business Week (June 21) and the Mexico Institute’s Senior Advisor Duncan Wood in BBC News (June 11) argue that stagnant wages and other economic difficulties in Mexico may be driving support for the PRI. This concurs with a new poll on attitudes about the fight against organized crime, published June 20 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which found that most voters do not believe that the PRI offers the best solution to the country’s security challenges:

“Asked which political party could do a better job of dealing with organized crime and drug traffickers, two of the three major parties received almost equal support. Calderón’s National Action Party, or PAN, led with 28 percent; front-runner Enrique Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, had 25 percent; and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, scored only 13 percent.

The findings refute the assumption that Mexicans prefer the PRI to win because they can return to the old ways of doing business with criminals.

For an excellent overview of the electoral landscape, see the June 18 report by Mexico Institute Associate Director Eric L. Olson.

Other races

There are seven important concurrent races at the subnational level on July 1, including six governorships and the mayoral race in Mexico City: continuity is expected in four of these. The Mexico City government will likely remain PRD: Miguel Ángel Mancera, the party’s candidate and city’s former attorney general, currently draws 70.5 percent of the effective vote. Guanajuato looks like a safe race for the ruling PAN and Tabasco and Yucatán seem likely to stay with the incumbent PRI.

However, races in the three other states may result in PRI gains. The PAN polls in third place in two states it currently governs: the PRI is ahead in Jalisco, which the PAN has held since 1995, and is in a close race with the PRD in Moreles, which the PAN has governed since 2000. Chiapas, which elected a PRD governor in 2006, looks likely to bring back a PRI government.

Debate sessions

The presidential candidates, except for frontrunner Peña Nieto, participated in an online debate convened by the “I am 132” student movement on June 19. The candidates focused on their main talking points. López Obrador reiterated that he represents the opportunity for “true change” in Mexico, while Vázquez Mota stressed that voters must choose between the authoritarianism of the past that the PRI and PRD represent and the stability and continuity that she represents. Quadri, who with just two to four percent support in the polls has virtually no chance of winning, spent his time noting the points of consensus: collaboration, he argued, is what Mexico needs. You can see more of their comments on our Twitter feed from June 19, where we live-tweeted the debate.

Peña Nieto declined the invitation: while acknowledging the group’s contribution to Mexican democracy, he noted that the movement has “officially taken a political position against my project and my person” and was therefore not a neutral space.

The foreign policy advisors for the three main candidates, however, did participate in a June 18 conference at the Mexico Institute. The debate, moderated by Léon Krauze, anchor of Univisión’s KMEX 34 in Los Angeles, covered security and economic cooperation with the United States, energy reform, relations with Central America, and the likelihood of fraud in the upcoming elections. For more information, you can watch the video or read our Tweets from the June 18 event.

Five new polls place Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI-PV) 12 to 16 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival, which most find to be Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD-PT-MC). The standings in each poll have remained largely constant over the past three weeks, which encompass the final presidential debate held June 10.

Peña Nieto ahead by 12 to 16 percent

Peña Nieto

In the latest Reforma poll (June 14-17), whose previous version published May 31 caused a stir when it showed López Obrador just four percentage points behind Peña Nieto, the frontrunner’s effective lead (excluding undecided voters and non-respondents) extended to 12 percent. Peña Nieto holds 42 percent support, compared to 30 percent for López Obrador, 24 for Josefina Vázquez Mota (PAN), and four percent for Gabriel Quadri (PANAL). The poll attributes Peña Nieto’s gain to his growing support in the north and south of the country, where he increased by 12 and seven percent, respectively.

The Excélsior-BCG poll (June 13-14) places the PAN candidate in second place, unlike the other four polls; Vázquez Mota trails Peña Nieto by 13 points with 29 percent compared to his 42 percent. López Obrador, who was tied at 28 percent with Vázquez Mota in the previous poll, fell to 27 percent. Quadri stayed at two percent.

Peña Nieto leads by 14 points in the latest Parametría poll (June 12-16), with López Obrador at 30 percent and Vázquez Mota at 24 percent. Quadri has four percent.

Mitofsky (June 15-17) finds a larger lead of 15.7 percent for Peña Nieto but a closer race for second. The PRI candidate polls at 44.4 percent, with López Obrador following with 28.7 percent and Vázquez Mota with 24.6 percent. Quadri polled 2.3 percent.

Peña Nieto’s advantage is 15.9 percent in the Buendía y Laredo poll (June 11-14), which finds a similar race as Mitofsky for second place. Peña Nieto holds 43.6 percent, compared to 27.7 for the PRD candidate, 25.1 for the PAN candidate, and 3.6 for the PANAL candidate.

The outlier

López Obrador

In his own poll (June 13-17), which includes undecided voters and non-respondents, López Obrador leads by 1.4 percentage points above Peña Nieto, with 27.8 percent over 26.4 percent. Vázquez Mota follows with 18.4 percent and Gabriel Quadri (PANAL) with 2.5 percent. The campaign did not reveal the company that carried out the poll.

Olson

With mere days before Mexico’s July 1^st federal election the country of 114 million, with roughly 77 million eligible voters, is on the cusp of deciding what direction it will take for the next six years and possibly beyond.  An election that just weeks ago appeared settled with a clear frontrunner and little movement in the polls has more recently reflected new dynamics in the race and added an element of uncertainty.

In this context, undecided voters, those on the sidelines and the previously uninvolved have begun to shift election dynamics.  The election has effectively gone from a boring and predictable affair with the only remaining question the margin of victory, to one in which the final election outcome may not be clear, with a modicum of uncertainty injected into the process.  The remaining question is whether momentum and passion will swing decisively to AMLO or Vázquez Mota enabling either to overcome the vaunted organizational capacity of the PRI and Peña Nieto’s commanding lead in the polls.

Whether AMLO or Vázquez Mota emerges as the primary alternative to Peña Nieto will depend in large part on the “second choice preferences” of each candidate’s supporters.   Possibly the biggest challenge for both will be to convince voters to support them as the best alternative to Peña Nieto when their candidate no longer seems violable.  For example, if PAN supporters decide their candidate cannot win, will they vote for Peña Nieto to ensure that the country does not move to the left with AMLO, or will they vote for AMLO because of their historic antipathy to the PRI and refusal to return power to the party they defeated in 2000.  Most polls suggest that PAN voters lean to the PRI as their second choice, and a recent statement from former President Vicente Fox, the first one to defeat the PRI, seemed to call on PAN sympathizers to support the PRI over the PRD and AMLO.

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