Electoral Results, As Anticipated

06/13/2015

By Veronica Ortiz O.

As we wrote here, the midterm election pointed out to some likely unexpected results. Those results finally materialized and provided interesting surprises.

Undoubtedly, the best news was the electoral turnout, despite the threats of violence, boycott, abstention and rallies for “ballot annulling”. With 47% of the voters list showing up, it was the busiest midterm election since 1997. At State level, turnout surpassed an astonishing 60% in Nuevo León. Clearly, people opted for a democratic way to reject violence and provocation.

Interestingly, the percentage of invalid ballots (4.78%) was smaller than in 2009 (5.3%) defeating the “anulista” movement call to waste the whole electoral process. And surprises went even farther:

1. The victories of the “independent” candidates, or more accurately “no party candidates”. The cases of Pedro Kumamoto (local representative in Jalisco), Manuel Clouthier (Congressman from Sinaloa), César Valdez (mayor in Nuevo León), Alfonso Martínez (mayor in Michoacán) and the rising star Jaime Rodriguez Calderón, a.k.a “Bronco”, elected governor of prosperous northern State of Nuevo León.
2. The punishment vote and alternation. Five states switched from political colors, as voters punished serious corruption allegations against PAN governor Guillermo Padrés of Sonora and PRI´s governor Rodrigo Medina in Nuevo León. Or as a reaction to blatant abandonment as was the case of PRD in Guerrero and PRI in Michoacán. Finally but on a separate file, the enigmatic loss of PRI´s highly rated administration of Gov. José Calzada in central State of Queretaro, probably due more to an unconvincing campaign by the official candidate or to the decision of a more sophisticated electorate.
3. Mexico City entering the multi-party system, as voters chose to end18 years of left wing PRD hegemony in the federal district. The party will retain 6 of 16 “delegaciones” (municipalities), while newcomer Morena wins 5, PRI gets 3 and PAN 2. In local Congress elections, Lopez Obrador´s new party Morena gives an outstanding performance wresting the majority of seats forcing down the PRD to second place and right wing PAN to third.
4. Nationwide, Morena enters the stage as the fourth political force, displacing the green party PVEM. Surely a strong platform for Lopez Obrador´s 2018 presidential ambitions, but that could also prove insufficient to the task.
5. The three major parties end up losing votes (PRD in a lesser proportion, by the way) but keep the 2012 ranking in Congress, conveying an implicit endorsement to the Pacto por México.

As anticipated, PRI´s victory (along with its allies the Green Party PVEM and the Teachers´ Union Party PANAL) reversed the trend set by the three previous midterm elections where the ruling party lost majority in Congress.

What they make of this victory will give abundant material for further discussion.

* Lawyer and political analyst. Journalist in the newspaper El Economista and TV presenter in Canal del Congreso and AprendeTV in Mexico.

@veronicaortizo

A Fragmented Political Landscape

By Andrew Selee

It’s too early to know the full impact of yesterday’s elections in Mexico, but there is no question that these were far more momentous than midterm elections usually are, with profound short-term and long-term consequences for the future of Mexico’s political system.  Here are four quick takeaways on the implications of the results:

* The political landscape in Mexico is now more fragmented than ever before with no single party towering over the others.  Mexico has long been a political system based on three strong parties and a few smaller ones.  Now there are at least five, if not more, that appear to have a significant base of support.  The victory of an independent candidate in Nuevo Leon, Mexico’s most economically important state, sets a very important precedent that will decentralize the political system even more in the future and allow citizens to organize outside the traditional parties.

* It was a mixed night for President Enrique Pena Nieto and the PRI.  Although the PRI appears to have won the largest number of votes for Congress and state governors, the party won less than 30 percent of the vote, appears to have lost a few crucial governors’ races that it had expected to win (Nuevo Leon, Queretaro, and Michoacan), and will have to piece together a working majority in the Congress with the Green Party, the New Alliance Party, and perhaps a few others on key votes.  Of course, it’s not unusual for the incumbent party to lose ground in the midterm elections (this is the fourth straight time it’s happened), but the PRI seemed to be in a particularly strong position going into this election and expected to do much better.  This election is hardly a repudiation of Pena Nieto’s government — which will likely be able to move forward with its reform agenda in Congress — but it’s certainly not a ringing endorsement either.

* The PAN came in as the second strongest party, though it received only a fifth of the votes, and the left divided like never before among various parties.  Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s party, Morena, made a very respectable showing against the PRD, probably winning five of Mexico City’s delegations (municipalities) and presenting a strong challenge to the PRD in the bastion of the left.

* The elections were actually carried out in relative peace, despite attempts to disrupt them in three states in the south.  However, an unusually high number of voters (roughly five percent) appear to have left their ballots blank in protest against all of the political parties.

In the next few hours, we will know more about how the main parties ended up and who will govern each state, but clearly this is an election that has shaken the foundations of Mexico’s political system like few others.

Andrew Selee is the Executive Vice President of the Wilson Center and Senior Advisor to the Mexico Institute.

Mexico Elections 2015: Green Party Fined As Protesters Petition For Deregistration

By Julia Glum in International Business Times 05/14/15

Mexico’s Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, or PVEM) was penalized again this week as calls for the group’s deregistration grew. The National Electoral Institute fined PVEM about 322 million pesos, or about $21 million, Wednesday for advertisements the group paid for illegally, CNN reported. The decision came as a Change.org petition demanding authorities withdraw PVEM’s registration surpassed 150,000 signatures.

“The fines to be imposed on the Green Party are insufficient and ineffective,” the petition’s authors wrote in Spanish. “It is time that citizens demand that the law is enforced and that the authorities do their job.”

But when the topic came up Wednesday during a meeting of the congressional Permanent Commission, politicians shut it down. Senators and deputies affiliated with PVEM and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) voted against discussing opposition Sen. Armando Ríos Piter’s proposal that the party be disqualified from next month’s congressional elections, Aristegui Noticias reported.

Ríos Piter and the petitioners argued that PVEM continually violated electoral regulations. In this election cycle, the small party has been disciplined for giving out free movie tickets, gift cards and calendars made — ironically — from toxic materials, Telesur reported. “To request the cancellation of the PVEM is the least we can do,” Ríos Piter said in Spanish. “This impunity is now a reflection of the massive corruption that exists in our electoral system.”

PVEM has fired back, saying they haven’t committed any irregularities and are only being prosecuted because other parties have pressured the electoral authorities to change the rules, journalist Gustavo Rentería reported. The party’s spokesman, Charles Bridge, told reporters it intended to file a complaint against Mexico’s government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Excelsior reported.

PVEM is one of 10 parties campaigning ahead of Mexico’s legislative election set for June 7.

Gubernatorial Elections in Mexico: The Polls

By Pedro Valenzuela Parcero

In this infographic, the Mexico Institute analyzes the published polls of some Mexican states holding gubernatorial elections in 2015. We highlight the top two candidates in the states, except in the case of Nuevo León, where we want to highlight the surprising rise of an independent candidate above the PAN’s candidate (click here to read our previous analysis on Nuevo León).

In general, the fight for governor in each state will end up being between two candidates or coalitions. The PAN is competitive in almost all of the gubernatorial races, but the PRD is strong in the southern region of the country. Furthermore, the PRI is competitive in all of the elections, either leading the preferences or coming in a close second.  In particular, in the states of Sonora, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, and Michoacán, the race will likely become more competitive as the campaigns continue. In the states of Colima, Guerrero, and Nuevo León, although the current leaders have a significant advantage, this may change due to the recent trend of the other top contenders. Finally, in Baja California Sur and Campeche, the leaders in the polls could strengthen their positions as the campaigns advance.

Download here a pdf version of the infographic and visit here the post in our website

Visit here for more information on this election

Visit here for other polls analysis

Mexico’s Greens: pro-death penalty, allegedly corrupt – and not very green

By The Guardian, 04/21/15

Allied with the governing PRI, the party has little to say about deforestation or climate change and critics call it a family firm ‘bordering on organised crime’

In much of the world, green politicians struggle to shake off the impression that they are impossible dreamers whose lofty principles would be unlikely to survive the grubby and cynical world of politics.

This has never been a problem in Mexico: leaders of the country’s Green party have regularly been accused of corruption, selling political favours – and of showing no interest in environmental issues. In 2009, the party ran an election campaign calling for the return of the death penalty.

Now the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico faces record 180m peso (£7.9m/$11.7m) fines for breaching electoral campaign rules amid growing anger over its tactics ahead of midterm elections in June. More than 96,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that electoral authorities withdraw the party’s registration after it flooded the country with political advertising before the campaign period officially began.

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Visit here for more information on the parties for this election.

Visit here for more information regarding the last political reform in Mexico.

Visit here for our polls analysis.

Mexico Elections: Detestable Green Party Reflects Mexico’s Weak Democracy

By Mexico Voices, 04/13/15

This was a column originally published in Reforma: Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez – Translated by Mexico Voices

Some say that Flaubert’s letters were his masterpiece. More than his novels, writing comes alive in his letters; you can see critical spark, irony and venom. In one of them I find he confesses his deep antipathy for political parties.

“I have no sympathy for any political party, rather, I hate them all, because I believe they are all equally limited, false, puerile, employees of the ephemeral, without a joint vision and without ever rising beyond what is helpful. I hate all forms of despotism. I am a rabid liberal.”

It is gratifying to transcribe these words. Make them my own as I rewrite them. Detestable parties: snakes, deceitful, short sighted, trivial parties. But not all parties are equally detestable. In today’s Mexico there is one that stands above the rest, more loathsome and odious than the rest. To me, the Green Party [Green Ecologist Party of Mexico, PVEM], is, as Jorge Alcocer [Mexican economist and political activist], called it, a despicable party.

I am not alone in my dislike. This will be the umpteenth article published in recent weeks expressing disgust against the policies of this organization determined to circumvent the law and corrupt democracy. There are voices calling for the cancellation of its registration. All that’s left is to expel it from the competition, they say.

If this party infuriates so many it’s, in all honesty, because it represents not only a particularly abhorrent side of Mexican politics, but also because it has found, in the national mess, clues to a noticeable efficacy. Faced with the general discrediting of politics and the pluralist regime itself, the Green Party leaders have designed a communication strategy that works. Yes, it’s illegal. Yes, it’s grossly demagogic. But it seems, so far, successful. I have no doubt that the Green Party threatens Mexico’s precarious democratic system from within. It does so because it projects daily the shamelessness of impunity. Or, rather, the rationality of abuse.

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Visit here for more information on the parties for this election.

Visit here for more information regarding the last political reform in Mexico.

Visit here for our polls analysis.

Campaign Advertising

By Pedro Valenzuela Parcero

According to Integralia, a think tank based in Mexico City, during this electoral process there will be a total of 24.5 million advertising spots for political parties and candidates. In 2007, changes to the law were made in order to control the access of the parties and candidates to radio and TV. Those changes were a product of the controversial 2006 Presidential Election and are the current normative framework under which campaign advertising is being regulated for the 2015 midterm elections.

Two basic ideas were behind the regulation for campaign advertising. First, it guarantees equity for the candidates and proportionality for the parties, according to previous voting levels. Second, it eradicates negative campaigns. To do that, a special committee was created with the objectives of 1.) allocating times for TV and radio promotion and 2.) knowing and approving all the advertisements.

Following Integralia’s report, the private value of the broadcasts in Mexico City and Estado de México will only be around $1,043,000 USD. The PRI will be able to transmit 5.5 million spots, the PAN 4.7 million, and the PRD 3.6 million. This contrasts both with the newer parties such as MORENA, PH, and ES, which will have around 1 million spots each, and with the independent candidates, which will only have access to 342,504 advertising spots.

With this in mind, it is good to analyze the messages that the parties will be transmitting to the citizens over the next two months. For that purpose, here are some spots and the multimedia accounts for all of the parties, where one can analyze their TV and radio spots (all the spots are in Spanish):

Click here for more PAN spots

Click here for more PRI spots

Click here for more PRD spots

Click here for more PVEM spots

Click here for more PANAL spots

Click here for more MORENA spots

Click here for more Movimiento Ciudadano spots

And if you want to check out PT, PH, ES, and independent candidates advertising plus a complete list of all the local and federal advertising by party visit here.

Mexico City: Mancera, MORENA, and the PRD

By Pedro Valenzuela Parcero

Around 23 million people live in the Metropolitan Area of Mexico, which encompasses municipalities from Estado de México and Hidalgo. Of these 23 million people, almost 9 million live in Mexico City. In this election, all of the municipalities (or delegaciones) and the local legislature will be renewed.

Miguel Mancera, the Mayor of Mexico City, was elected in 2012 and enters the midterm election with high levels of disapproval, according to the latest Reforma survey. However, numbers show that his popularity increased 8 points during the last 4 months. As shown in the chart below, Mancera’s highest approval rates, from both leaders and civil society, come from the way he handles cultural issues. On the other hand, his lowest approval rates surround the way he deals with issues related to informal street trading and corruption, from leaders and civil society respectively.

Given this context, Reforma’s latest poll on electoral preferences in Mexico City registers a significant competition between MORENA and the PRD for the state legislature, whereas the PRD still has the lead in preferences for municipalities.

For the state legislature, MORENA and the PRD have an effective vote preference of 24%, followed by the PRI with 15%, PAN with 11%, ES with 6%, PVEM with 5%, PH with 4%, PANAL with 3%, PT and MC with 2% and 4% for independent candidates.

Furthermore, for Federal Deputies in Mexico City, the electoral preferences are still led by the PRD with 24%, followed by MORENA with 20% (you can see the original figures in the Reforma Surveys Blog).

In conclusion, it is yet be seen if the competition will become tighter between PRD and MORENA, or if the former will have the political ability to remain the dominant political force in Mexico City.

For more information, watch this webcast from our event with Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, “The Challenge of Governance: Lessons from Mexico City.”

Citizens Call to Revoke Registry of Mexico’s Green Party

By TeleSUR, 04/06/15

20,000 signatures have called for revoking the registry of the party considered to be a close ally of the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

With the official launch of midterm election campaigning for nearly 2,000 local and federal seats beginning Sunday, a growing number of Mexican citizens are seeking to revoke the registration of one party that has racked-up millions of dollars in fines for its abuse of campaign propaganda.

More than 21,000 voters have signed an online petition to revoke the registration of the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), which has been fined at least 10 times by the country’s electoral disputes tribunal for abuse of campaign propaganda.

The party is closely allied with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and analysts have accused the PVEM of effectively being an offshoot of the PRI.

The fines have amounted to more than US$12 million. The most recent fine comes after the party utilized environment-damaging materials in free campaign calendars.

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PRI has more than 10 points of advantage

By Pedro Valenzuela Parcero

According to the latest poll (with March data) published by BCG-Excélsior, the PRI has an advantage of 13 over the PAN in electoral preferences toward the 2015 midterm elections. the PRI has 36%, followed by the PAN with 22%, PRD with 15%, PVEM with 8%, MORENA with 7%, MC and PANAL with 3%, and the rest with 2%. 

According to the poll, only 40% of the survey respondents are totally or highly interested in this elections whereas 21% is not very interested. Furthermore, 41% is not identified with any political party.