This guide will no longer be updated, as it was a special project about the 2012 Mexican elections. It will, however, remain available for research purposes.

For further analysis on Mexican politics, please visit the Mexico Portal. Thank you for your interest.

The first month after the election [in Spanish]

CNN México, 8/1/12

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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Commentary on the Mexican Elections by Mexico Institute Staff and Colleagues

For deeper analysis and background on the July 1 elections in Mexico, we have collected selection of insights from Mexico Institute staff and colleagues on the PRI’s rise to power, the prospects for security, economic, and energy policy, the impact on U.S.-Mexico relations and the future of Mexican democracy. This list will be continually updated on the Mexico Institute homepage as more articles are released. We hope you find this collection useful. Please visit The Mexico Institute Election’s Guide and The Mexico Portal for additional coverage, and join us (or watch the webcast) on July 9th at the Woodrow Wilson Center for “Mexico’s 2012 Election in Perspective.”

Leftist candidate rejects Mexico results as ‘fraudulent’

AFP, 7/2/2012

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 »

 

Five Take-Aways from the Mexican Election

Andrew Selee, The Mexico Institute’s Elections Guide, 7/2/2012

 

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.

Peña Nieto projected winner in Mexican presidential vote

CNN, 7/2/2012

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 Polls 6/28/2012

Katie Putnam, The Mexico Institute’s Elections Guide, 6/28/2012

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.

The Week in Review: 6/25/2012

Katie Putnam, The Mexico Institute’s Elections Guide, 6/25/2012

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.

The Polls: 6/21/2012

Katie Putnam, The Mexico Institute’s Elections Guide, 6/21/2012

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.

Mexico’s 2012 Elections: Key Issues and Critical Questions Now and Beyond

Eric L. Olson, The Mexico Institute, 6/18/2012

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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