Mexico (Yucatan) 2007

[ag]

I nearly missed this one, as I am out of the country now. A big upset in Yucatan: in the gobernatorial race PRI defeated PAN by 49% to 42% and recovered the state after a 6 year hiatus.  This is a huge upset - PAN was getting superstrong  in the state, and it seemed nothhing could stop it. I will try to post the details when I have time.

[ag]

Looks like an overall PRI recovery in the state. They also won most legislative districts, and came within a whisker of recapturing the mayoralty in the state  capital (and the only significant city) Merida - PAN held that, but by a prayer: 114.6 thousand votes for PAN against 111.5 thousand for PRI.

[ag]

Yucatan's electoral system has a couple of features unique in Mexico, though not uncommon in the US. Rather than requiring formal coalitions, it allows multiple parties to endorse the same candidate, adding up the votes received on different lines to determine the winner. It also allows independents and tallies write-ins.

Turnout 69.8%.  W/ 80.52% of precincts reporting (at which point the PAN candidate conceded), the preliminary result is:

PRI (49.12%) + PVEM (0.40%) + PAY (0.18%, local party) = 49.70%
PAN (42.39) + PANAL (0.37%) = 42.76%
CTSY (local party) 3.34%
PRD 2.54%
Alternativa 0.16%
Write-ins 0.02%
Invalid 1.49%

[ag]

With the governor's race resolved, the intrigue is now with the Merida mayoral race (Merida is the only major town in the state - all the other municipalities have populations of under 75 thousand each, whereas Merida is over 10 times that). So far, the preliminary count gives the advantage to PAN, but it seems to be still too close to call.


With 77.96% of precincts reporting the result is:

Turnout 63%

PAN 114,697 votes 44.69%
PRI 111,584 votes + PVEM 1,196 votes = 112,780 votes 43.95%
PT 8,591 votes + Convergencia 7,955 votes = 16,546 votes 6.45%
PRD 5,080 votes 1.98%
PANAL 1,792 votes 0.70%
Alternativa 1,061 votes 0.41%
PAY (local party) 470 votes 0.18%
write-ins 65 votes 0.03%
invalid 4,141 votes 0.65%

Otherwise, it seems PRI will control about 45 municipalities, PAN about 35, PRD 3 (all tiny),  PVEM 1 and 1 goes to a coalition of minor local parties.

In the state legislative races PRI is ahead in 10 and PAN in 5 (there are also PR seats, that are going to determine whether PRI has a majority or has to share power in the state congress.

[Verily]

Might this have mostly been a strategic transformation? That is, did PRD's vote collapse in favor of the also left-wing PRI against the right-wing PAN?

[ag]

I missed much of the campaign, so I don't know how it went and can't answer this for sure. To a degree, possibly so, but PRD has never been much of a presence in the state. Its congressional candidates (to ignore Lopez Obrador's personal effect), in coalition with PT and Convergencia, only got 12% of the vote in the last federal race (even Lopez only got 15.86%). In fact, the sum of the vote shares  for PAN (45.3%) and Panal (2.9%) in that race would have been just a fraction of a percentage point above the sum of PRI/PVEM (36.0%)  and PRD/PT/Convergencia (12.0%). This time around PAN clearly had a setback even compared with its own performance last year.

Still, the fact is, Mexico is left-leaning, and PAN, on its own, gets an absolute majority in few places other than Guanajuato state. Even in Yucatan, one of its best states in last year's campaigns, it seems it does not have enough of a base to win against a unified opposition.