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Mexico's Election Results and Their Implications

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Mexico's Election Results and Their Implications 'Who Could Have Predicted That?' Mexico's Election Results and their Implications Report of Mexico Election Meeting 20 July 2006 This report is intended as a summary of the meeting. It does not purport to be a full or verbatim record. Please obtain the permission of the individual speaker, by contacting [email protected], before citing or quoting any extract from individual speakers’ remarks. Speakers: Dr Kevin J Middlebrook, Reader in Latin American Politics, Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London Professor Laurence Whitehead, Director of the Centre for Mexican Studies and Acting Warden of Nuffield College, University of Oxford Dr Peter West, Chief Economist, Poalim Asset Management Theme: 'Who Could Have Predicted That?' Mexico's Election Results and their Implications Chair: Professor Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Director, Chatham House ------------------------------------------------ SPEAKER PRESENTATIONS Speaker 1 – Kevin J Middlebrook The title selected for this session highlights the uncertainty of the electoral process in Mexico. Results to date have certainly underscored the very unpredictable character of the elections. One thing many did accurately foresee was that it would be a very close race. Three topics deserve particular attention: 1. The results announced after the district-level count on July 5 2. Some of the principal factors that might help explain these outcomes 3. The “politics of electoral results”- including allegations of fraud - that may guide developments between now and the first week of September. As a preface it is important to note, firstly, that Mexican society is deeply divided along class, regional, and other lines and, secondly, that the manifestations of those divisions are also, to an important degree, politically constructed. Mexico’s presidential campaign pitted a mobilizing centre-leftist party and its candidate, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 1 against an increasingly powerful, incumbent centre-right party and its candidate, the National Action Party (PAN) and Felipe Calderón. Over the course of the campaign, these competing options came to be viewed by many voters as distinct, alternative paths to Mexico’s future: one emphasizing social justice for those marginalized in the course of economic globalization, with an increased role for the state in national affairs - an option denounced as highly risky by its opponents, who compared López Obrador to Hugo Chávez and reminded voters that “populist” initiatives were at the root of the country’s many past financial crises - and another option stressing continuity in economic policy, with a renewed promise that additional investment and sound macroeconomic management will produce substantially greater employment and thus eventually address the country’s pressing social needs. We must await more detailed analyses of polling data before we can begin to assess seriously how voters from different partisan backgrounds, regions, and social groups responded to these competing messages. However, it does seem to be the case that the so-called “fear campaign” waged against López Obrador, and the value that individual voters attach to low inflation and overall economic stability, weighed heavily on the preferences they expressed on election day. 1) Results Thus Far Source: results reported by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) following district-level tabulations on 5th July: Calderón 35.9% (of the valid vote) López Obrador 35.3 Roberto Madrazo (PRI) 22.3 On the basis of these results, Madrazo conceded his defeat. The 0.6% difference between Calderón and López Obrador translates into just 244,000 votes, out of a total of some 41.5 million ballots cast. Among minor party candidates, Patricia Mercado of Socialdemocratic and Peasant Alternative (Alternativa Socialdemócrata y Campesina) did best, with 2.7% of the valid vote. The overall turnout was 58.1%; 2.1% of ballots were annulled (827,000). In elections for the federal Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the PAN won a slightly smaller share of the total vote than it did for president (33.4% and 33.5%, respectively. However, López Obrador’s “Alliance for the Good of All” coalition (consisting of the PRD, the Labour Party [PT], and Convergence for Democracy [CD]) received almost 6 points more in the presidential contest that in did in the Chamber and the Senate (29.0% and 29.7%, respectively). Conversely, Madrazo’s share of the presidential vote was 6 percentage points lower than the congressional vote for the “Alliance for Mexico” coalition (comprising the PRI and the Mexican Ecological Green Party [PVEM]; at 28.2% and 28.1%, respectively, in the Chamber and Senate). These results mean that, although no single party will hold a majority of seats in either legislative chamber, the PAN is, for the first time in its history, the “first minority” in both bodies. The PRD is elevated to “second minority” in both the Chamber and the Senate, a 2 considerable advance on its previous position. The PRI is relegated to third-place. There are more seats held by small parties than ever before. These results broadly confirm Mexico’s established electoral profile, with the PAN prevailing in the Centre-west and North and the PRD in the South and South-east. However, the PAN ran very well in the supposed PRD strongholds of Michoacán and Zacatecas (it holds the governorship in both states), and it carried all three gubernatorial races decided on July 2 (Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Morelos). The PRD won Mexico’s three most populous states: Mexico, Veracruz, and the Federal District—where it has dominated local government in Mexico City since 1997. One considerable surprise was that the PRI failed to carry any of the 17 states where it now holds the governorship. 2) Explanations of electoral results Calderón With regard to Felipe Calderón’s apparent victory, two broad points can be stressed: firstly, the advantages of panista incumbency, and, secondly, a devastatingly effective mass media campaign against López Obrador. Incumbency in this context has various dimensions. It certainly includes the overall economic stability (in particular, low inflation and a favourable exchange rate) achieved by the Fox administration, underpinned in part by high international oil prices. It also includes President Fox’s own continued personal popularity, despite a very poor record of policy accomplishment while in office. (Some 60% of those with a positive opinion of Fox voted for Calderón.) Among other things, the PAN proved to be quite effective at using social welfare programs to bolster its electoral base, especially in the countryside. Support for more readily accessible, affordable home mortgages also appears to have won the PAN a sizeable constituency among the middle class. Incumbency factors would also include the PAN’s own increasing organizational strength. Over the past six years, the party has grown in membership, in national organizational presence, and in terms of the political strength of its societal allies, especially the Catholic Church and what might be called the “civil society of the Right.” By all accounts, the PAN mobilized itself much more effectively on election day than did its closest rival, the PRD. The media campaign against López Obrador came in two forms. The first was a sustained media blitz conducted by the Fox administration between January and May— some sources refer to as many as 85,000 radio and television spots—praising its own accomplishments, denouncing “populism” - in thinly veiled references to López Obrador - and advocating continuity. The second was a bare-knuckled negative advertising campaign by Calderón, in which he compared López Obrador to Venezuela’s Chávez and denounced him as “a danger to Mexico,” even while adopting the quasi-populist claim that he, Calderón, would be “the employment president”. The IFE eventually intervened to end or limit both of these media campaigns, but not before the attacks established a negative public image of López Obrador that, at least among some segments of the electorate, persisted throughout the campaign. López Obrador 3 Until late March of this year, López Obrador was definitely the candidate to beat. Indeed, even in the last few days before the election, the public mood in Mexico anticipated his victory, albeit by a narrow margin. The Fox administration’s failed attempt in 2004-2005 to impeach López Obrador for a minor offence, and thereby disbar him as a presidential candidate, had left him looking like a martyr for democracy. At times during the past year he led his various rivals by as much as 30 percentage points in the polls. Indeed, he faced no open opposition from within the PRD in his quest for the party’s presidential nomination. Nonetheless, after early April and his fateful decision not to participate in the first of two televised presidential debates, very little went right for him. During a six-week onslaught of negative radio and television advertising by Calderón in the late spring, López Obrador struggled to come up with an effective response—other than to deny that he was Hugo Chávez in Mexican huaraches. Although the PRD did increase its media spending toward the end of the campaign, for the most part López Obrador devoted his considerable energies to a town-by-town, plaza-by-plaza tour that had much popular appeal but which was not necessarily effective in reaching television-viewing middle- class audiences. On election day, the PRD’s own organizational weaknesses were on display. At its core, even though it carried the most populous states, the PRD remains essentially a regional party. One telling indicator is that it managed to post representatives at fewer polling places across the country than either the PRI or the PAN. Its efforts to bolster party cadres by organizing citizens’ networks (redes ciudadanas), parallel to the very effective brigadas del sol that López Obrador used to expand PRD influence in the 1990s, did not come to much, even though substantial resources were invested in this effort.
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