Regional elections in Mexico: the ruling party dominates two thirds of the country’s states

The results of the calculations of this Sunday’s regional elections resulted in a landslide victory for the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena, center-left), President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which dominates two thirds (22) of the country’s 32 states.

The devastating strength of Morena exhibited in the elections for the governor in 6 states, of which he won 4according to official accounts, it contrasts instead with the free fall of the opposition, which is increasingly weakened.

The National Action Party (PAN, right) reduced the number of governors from 11 to 5 under his rule for the past three years, since López Obrador took over the head of state, while the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, center), which ruled 14 states in 2018, now maintains just 3.

The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD, center-left), from which López Obrador deserted and from whose schism Morena emerged, It has gone from the government of 5 states to none between 2018 and 2022.

Morena, on the other hand, has acquired more and more territorial influence so that she does not have a single governorate in her power three years ago, now he will hold the reins of 22 statesincluding the capital, which is a powerful force to ensure victory in the 2024 elections.

change of hand

The states that will now be under the auspices of this political organization, which has come to replace the old PRI, which monopolized political power in Mexico for 76 years until 2018, represent 58.6% of the population and 57.7% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The four states that came under his control after this Sunday’s voting, which took place in an orderly and quiet manner, with the exception of a few isolated incidentsthey are Quintana Roo and Oaxaca (southeast), Hidalgo (center) and Tamaulipas (north).

However, victory in this state for candidate Morena Américo Villarreal could reach the courts after the opposition candidate, César Verástegui, announced that he would file various appeals for “the intervention of federal political actors and presidential candidates”.

Tamaulipas was the only election where there was a narrow margin between the two pointers, since Américo Villarreal got 52.7% of the votes, against Verástegui’s 44.8, but the figure is not close enough to argue that there was a fraud in the accounts.

The PAN-PRI-PRD alliance it only won in the United States from Aguascalientes (center) and from Durango (north), which already ruled.

The PRI in turn has lost two iconic states (Hidalgo and Oaxaca), in which it had held the monopoly of power for 93 years.

presidential celebration

President López Obrador celebrated his party’s overwhelming victory and attacked the opposition by noting that he had lost due to his “classism, racism and their contempt and lack of love for the people”.

“They go for the easy and the absurd. Before the election they organized a campaign to say that I have ties to drug trafficking,” he said, referring to the accusations leveled against him in this regard.

“How are you going to participate? insult, despise, reject to the poor, denying them the right to justice, democracy and betting, as before, on the media and manipulation, thinking that people are fools, “he said.

“For them, the people either do not exist and politics is a matter of politicians and elites or the people do not know”, added López Obrador, who celebrated that, despite the “passion flared up” during the elections, they did not recorded incidents. “there were no deaths, there was no violence” and “the citizens, as always, behaved up to the circumstances”.

The elections passed “in peace” and “practically all the boxes” (electoral tables) will be installed without “giving space to the red note because there are still those who rub their hands hoping that there will be violence in the elections,” he said.

Source: ANSA

PB