Mexican Elections 2017-18

[Hash]

District counts (official counts) begin tomorrow. The PREP only runs for 24 hrs. after the end of the election.

[jaichind]

Looking at the results and as pointed out before, there seems to be something funny stuff going on in the Puebla governor race.  There the MORENA-PT-PES candidate is running way behind the Congressional  MORENA-PT-PES vote.  Of course when I say 'funny" it does not and most likely is not rigging but more about maneuvers before the vote.    As pointed out before the PAN-PRD-MC candidate is the wife of the current PAN governor.  

If you look at the MORENA-PT-PES non-null vote in governors races and compare them to the MORENA-PT-PES  Congressional vote you get

Yucatan
Senate      27.91%
House       28.18%
Governor   20.95%
Here MORENA-PT-PES was clearly third so there might have been some tactical voting by MORENA-PT-PES Congressional voters


Tabasco
Senate      70.09%
House       70.51%
Governor   64.28%
AMLO's home state.  In 2012 the PRD candidate for governor also ran behind the PRD-PT-MC Congressional vote so this seems consistent.

 
Puebla
Senate      50.14%
House       47.76%
Governor   35.71%
Big dropoff in the MORENA-PT-PES governor vote when compared to Congressional races.


Chiapas
Senate      53.00%
House       55.08%
Governor   42.28%
Big drop-off here as well in the MORENA-PT-PES governor vote but we already know the PVEM governor is up to all sorts of funny business with PRI and PVEM running separately and pulling in some MORENA-PT-PES vote on the margins in addition to other funny business the governor might be up to.


CDMX
Senate      52.86%
House       52.33%
Governor   48.20%
Some drop-off.  PRI PVEM PANAL running separately might have pull in some votes as well as the PH and an independent candidate.


Jalisco
Senate      24.93%
House       29.94%
Governor   25.26%
The Senate vote share is not the "true" MORENA-PT-PES level of support with Kumamoto running a strong independent campaign so there was a falloff in the MORENA-PT-PES governor vote relative to the congressional vote.   Here in the governor race MC and PAN which are both strong here ran separately and most likely pulled in some  MORENA-PT-PES.


Veracruz
Senate      49.97%
House       46.98%
Governor   44.88%
Some falloff in the MORENA-PT-PES governor vote but does not seem large.  Of course the PAN-PRD-MC candidate is the son of the PAN governor which must have also made a difference.


Morelos
Senate      54.50%
House       48.79%
Governor   54.38%
The MORENA-PT-PES vote share in the House race is not its "true" level of support given a bunch of independents ran.  The MORENA-PT-PES candidate for governor is the famous soccer player Cuauhtémoc Blanco which must have pushed up his vote.  Anyway no net falloff in the  MORENA-PT-PES vote.


Guanajuato‎
Senate      27.00%
House       25.93%
Governor   25.23%
No significant falloff in the governor vote.


So in Chiapas and Puebla there were large MORENA-PT-PES falloff in Governor race vote share relative to the MORENA-PT-PES congressional vote.  In Chiapas we know there were all sorts of funny business with to governor PLUS PRI and PVEM running separately must have pull in some votes from the MORENA-PT-PES legislative vote.  By inference in Puebla most likely there were all sorts of stuff the PAN governor must have done for his wife to win and way over-perform the PAN-PRD-MC Congressional vote.  

[Hash]

Martha Erika Alonso is not the wife of the current PAN governor, Tony Gali, but rather of the current governor's predecessor (and likely senator-elect), Rafael Moreno Valle. Tony Gali is a rather irrelevant stand-in for his predecessor, so the confusion is natural.

[jaichind]

Martha Erika Alonso is not the wife of the current PAN governor, Tony Gali, but rather of the current governor's predecessor (and likely senator-elect), Rafael Moreno Valle. Tony Gali is a rather irrelevant stand-in for his predecessor, so the confusion is natural.

Ahh ... you are right.  I got that mixed up.  Did I get it right on Veracruz where the PAN candidate is the son of the incumbent PAN governor ?

[Hash]

Martha Erika Alonso is not the wife of the current PAN governor, Tony Gali, but rather of the current governor's predecessor (and likely senator-elect), Rafael Moreno Valle. Tony Gali is a rather irrelevant stand-in for his predecessor, so the confusion is natural.

Ahh ... you are right.  I got that mixed up.  Did I get it right on Veracruz where the PAN candidate is the son of the incumbent PAN governor ?

Yes, that's correct.

The voto cruzado in favour of PAN governors' machines in local races is not unique to Puebla: in Chihuahua, PAN-PRD-MC won 35 municipalities (running separately in some cases) against only 5 for Morena et al (and 11 fptp state congress districts v. 10 for Morena et al. and 1 for the PRI). In Anaya's native Querétaro, whose PAN governor is no great friend of the ex-candidate, the Frente took 10 of the fptp state congress districts against 3 for Morena et al., as well as a large majority of municipalities. In Tamaulipas, PAN et al. won 31 municipalities against only 5 for Morena.

[jaichind]

AMLO over-performance relative to the MORENA-PT-PES House vote is seen by the fact that MORENA-PT-PES won 218 out of 300 FPTP seats for the lower House but AMLO won 273 out of the 300 seats.  Most of these extra votes came from across the board except  for PAN.  And even some PAN Congressional voters it seems voted AMLO in some states.  PAN's overall vote share in the Prez race are made up by the fact that in Jalisco a lot of MC Congressional voters voted for Anaya under the PAN line.
 

[jaichind]

[
Yes, that's correct.

The voto cruzado in favour of PAN governors' machines in local races is not unique to Puebla: in Chihuahua, PAN-PRD-MC won 35 municipalities (running separately in some cases) against only 5 for Morena et al (and 11 fptp state congress districts v. 10 for Morena et al. and 1 for the PRI). In Anaya's native Querétaro, whose PAN governor is no great friend of the ex-candidate, the Frente took 10 of the fptp state congress districts against 3 for Morena et al., as well as a large majority of municipalities. In Tamaulipas, PAN et al. won 31 municipalities against only 5 for Morena.

I totally see your point and I am pretty sure you are right about strong local machine influences in voting for local offices.   Sorry to bicker since I know very little on what is going on at the ground level but I would argue at the numerical level what took place in Puebla seems fairly unusually in terms of scale.

Querétaro PREP seems to be down so I will focus on Chihuahua.  It is clear that AMLO totally outperformed his MORENA-PT-PES bloc across the board so I tend to use the MORENA-PT-PES Congressional vote as a basis of comparison.    To simplify things lets look at the vote share of   MORENA-PT-PES, PAN-PRD-MC, and PRI-PVEM-PANAL at all levels for Chihuahua (Senate, House, State legislature, and Municipal).  Doing so gets us this chart of non-null votes

                                  MORENA-PT-PES   PAN-PRD-MC   PRI-PVEM-PANAL   IND                
Senate                               37.89%            32.06%             30.05%
House                                35.97%            33.33%             25.60%         5.10%
State assembly                   32.74%            35.51%             26.54%         5.04%
Municipal                            27.24%            35.11%             22.71%       14.92%

So the MORENA-PT-PES vote share drop off from Congressional races it not that large for State assembly races and fairly large for Municipal races.  

But for Municipal races we have to factor in the 14.92% independents got.  Just looking at a couple of large Municipal Independent vote-getters, namely in JUAREZ, and comparing that to the Senate votes the districts that encompass  JUAREZ it is clear a significant (around 1/3) of that independent's vote are from MORENA-PT-PES Congressional voters.  Further more looking at the list of Municipal  races one can see a bunch of races in smaller towns where the MORENA-PT-PES  vote share are in the single digits.  That seems more of a function of MORENA as a party without roots there not being able to recruit candidates with local influence.  Once we factor these facts in the MORENA-PT-PES vote share drop-off for Municipal is really not that large.

In Puebla, on the other hand, in a state wide race where the MORENA-PT-PES candidate is a PRD Senator who clearly have name recognition and the fact there are no independents to split the vote the MORENA-PT-PES vote for governor fell 12%-15% behind the MORENA-PT-PES Congressional vote numerically seems very much out of place and out of place when in comparison to the  Chihuahua numbers.

[Hash]

Why didn't "El Bronco's" campaign get a lot of traction, it appears that even the North was sweep up by the ALMO "revolution" but I thought that the more developed North is more "conservative" or at least PAN affiliated than the South, could El Bronco have ran a regionalist campaign which could have exploited a possible North-South divide within the country? It appears that ALMO fever is everywhere. Or did the Anti-Amloites really shoot themselves in the foot?

El Bronco is an egocentric clown who has been a pretty poor governor -- investing more time in promoting his image and polishing his constructed persona than actually running the state, before breaking his promise and ditching his job mid-way for a vanity presidential candidacy. His record as governor has been quite mediocre, certainly disappointing many. His presidential campaign, meanwhile, will be mostly remembered for proposing to literally chop people's hands off and his clownish meme-generating debate performances (Facebook Bronco Investigation).

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Any historical reason there are five months of waiting for President-elect to be inaugurated?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Also, who could be considered the last genuine left-wing President of Mexico? Cardenas? Lopez Mateos?

[Dr. MB]

Also, who could be considered the last genuine left-wing President of Mexico? Cardenas? Lopez Mateos?

I'd go with Cardenas. His successor was more center-left, and most since have trended more to the right. Lopez Mateos was center-left as well.

[jaichind]

Also, who could be considered the last genuine left-wing President of Mexico? Cardenas? Lopez Mateos?

I would argue Portillo(1976-1982).  He was the last economic nationalist Mexico President.

[Velasco]

The MORENA landslide in congressional elections overwhelmed the traditional parties (PRI and PAN) and also prevented independent candidates won seats. Pedro Kumamoto and Manuel Clouthier aimed to be the first independents to be elected senators, representing Jalisco and Sinaloa states respectively. Both were unsuccessful.

Kumamoto is part of Wikipolitica, a platform that pushes citizens without a party to run in elections. They are young people coming out to make grassroots politics, advocate direct democracy and reject the party system. The height of this movement was in 2015, when Kumamoto won a seat in Jalisco State Congress with minimal funding. In order to run in this year's senatorial election, he had to collect at least 115k signatures. Finally Kumamoto failed to win a seat, although he got 598k votes throughout the state. PREP results for Senate in Jalisco were:

PAN-PRD-MC 32.99%  MORENA-PT-PES 24.01%  Kumamoto 21.83% PRI 12.17%  PVEM 3.45%  PANAL 1.86% Unregistered candidates 0.16% Null 3.53%

https://noticieros.televisa.com/elecciones-2018/elecciones-federales/resultados-federales/

Wikipolitica ran three unsuccessful candidates for the House in Jalisco state.

Independent Manuel Clouthier was less successful in Sinaloa. "I lacked the ability to persuade voters in the context of Morena tsunami", twitted the candidate. Sinaloa senate results:

MORENA-PT-PES 46.98%  PRI-PVEM-PANAL 24.08%  PAN-PRD-MC 18.95%  Clouthier 7.05% Unregistered 0.14% Null 2.8%

While these independent candidates for Congress promote grassroots politics and pedagogy, independent candidates for President El Bronco and Zavala are traditional politicians running outside party lines.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

What were the dynamics in the Jalisco race that MC won?

[jaichind]

Some pre-election polls had Kumamoto coming in second in the Jalisco  Senate race so it is not a surprise he came so close to winning.  In the end the AMLO surge carried MORENA-PT-PES past Kumamoto.  

I am surprise how poorly Clouthier did in the Sinaloa Senate race.  I thought he would be in a 3 way tie between PRI-PVEM-PANAL and  PAN-PRD-MC  for second place.

Another independent Senate candidate that was expected to do well was Pablo Abner Salazar Mendiguchia in Chiapas.   He was the PRD governor from 2000-2006 and has broken with PRD.  I had expected him to be in the double digits but in the end finished in the low single digits in terms of non-null vote share.

MORENA-PT-PES  53.00%  
PRI-PVEM-PANAL 31.50%
PAN-PRD-M         10.78%
Mendiguchía         4.72%

[jaichind]

What were the dynamics in the Jalisco race that MC won?

Jalisco used to be a strong PAN state having voted PAN to power as early as 1995.  In 2012 there was a large MC surge which took enough of the PAN votes away to let PRI win.  MC's relative strength in Jalisco since seems to have made it somewhat of a Jalisco regional party where it over-performs in local races.  PAN of course is eager to regain its lost glory so despite the PAN-PRD-MC alliance at the national level, MC, PAN and PRD (which is tiny in Jalisco) ran separately.  MC not running with PAN made it easier to appeal to MORENA-PT-PES Prez and Congressional voters plus its local Jalisco appeal lead to an easy victory for MC.

Of course in the Jalisco Senate race we had Kumamoto  running and it seems he pulled in support from all 3 blocs to come in at a strong 3rd place beating out PRI.

[jaichind]

I looked over the various local PREPs and the various state assembly election results.  The vote share of the various parties in those races seems highly correlated to the vote House Vote shares for the 3 major blocs.  So we should see the House Congressional vote shares as the "true" level of support for the various blocs with AMLO over-performance more to with some unique circumstances of him personally.

Sorry to continue to harp on my pet subject of Puebla.  Even the Puebla state assembly election results seems to point to an, somewhat reduced, advantage for the MORENA-PT-PES bloc.  To summerize, lets show the non-null vote shares in Puebla for the 3 blocs for the difference races (Prez, Senate, House, Governor, State assembly).  We have:


                               MORENA-PT-PES   PAN-PRD-MC   PRI-PVEM-PANAL     IND
Prez                             59.17%              20.68%             16.29%            3.86%
Senate                         50.14%              26.63%             23.23%
House                          47.76%              27.92%             24.32%
Governor                      35.71%              39.70%             24.59%
State Assembly             41.60%              33.27%             25.14%

Note that PAN has a bunch of micro local parties as allies in the State Assembly race which I also counted under  PAN-PRD-MC  vote share.

Ok so AMLO way over-performed like everywhere else so we can just discount that data.  It seems PRI-PVEM-PANAL is pretty steady at 23%-25%.  The differences in the MORENA-PT-PES and PAN-PRD-MC vote share across races are large and point to very high levels of vote splitting.  PAN-PRD-MC way over-performed even relative to the State Assembly races which shows that the strong PAN-PRD-MC performance in the governor races has some factor relating to the personalities of the race beyond a local-federal difference. 

It seems there is good circumstantial evidence that the governor candidate for PAN-PRD-MC is unusually strong (she is the wife of the ex-PAN governor), the MORENA-PT-PES  candidate is unusually unpopular, or there was some vote buying for the PAN-PRD-MC governor candidate or all three.  If  MORENA-PT-PES governor candidate got the  MORENA-PT-PES vote share in the State assembly races he would have won.

[jaichind]

Pauta Politica projection of seats
They seem to project PANAL will fall below 3% while PES will stay above it to get PR seats

Senate
MORENA+  68
 MORENA   55
 PT              6
 PES            7

PAN+         38
 PAN          24
 PRD           7
 MC             7

PRI+         22
 PRI          15
 PVEM         6
 PANAL        1


House
MORENA+ 307
 MORENA  191
 PT             61
 PES           55

PAN+      130
 PAN         82
 PRD         21
 MC          27

PRI+         63
 PRI          45
 PVEM       16
 PANAL       2

[jaichind]

Another interesting Senate race is in NL.  Here MC and PAN ran separately and won first and second pushing MORENA-PT-PES from any seats  Both PAN-PRD-MC and PRI-PVEM-PANAL alliances broke up in the NL Congressional races with only MORENA-PT-PES holding together. 

For the Senate race it is (non-null)
MC                       25.23%
PAN                      24.79%
MORENA-PT-PES    22.15%
PRI                       15.57%
IND                        4.79%  (pro El Bronco)
PVEM                      3.91%
PANAL                    2.82%
PRD                       0.74%

So the PAN-MC split actually helped it get an extra seat and deny MORENA-PT-PES a Senate seat.

The MC candidate did unusually well.  To understand why here is the NL Lower House vote share (non-null)
MC                       11.31%
PAN                      29.71%
MORENA-PT-PES    25.22%
PRI                       18.50%
INDs                      6.17%  (I assume most of them should be pro El Bronco)
PVEM                     5.00%
PANAL                    3.16%
PRD                       0.94%

So the MC Senate candidate pulled in support from all sorts parties from the Lower House vote.  It seems the MC candidate is the nephew of a jailed #2 in a large drug cartel.  That drug cartel's influence must have played a role in the MC Senate candidate significant over-performance of his party's Lower House performance.   

[jaichind]

Real count begins at
https://computos2018.ine.mx

Most likely will take more than 24 hours to finish (more like 36 hours)

[Former President tack50]

Now that I think about it, couldn't Morena-PT-PES have tried to run multiple candidates in states where they would get a landslide, in order to take all 3 of the Senate seats? (instead of just 2). Granted that would be hard to organize and it's a risky strategy but if done correctly it would have meant a massive majority.

For example in Tabasco the results seem to be:

Morena-PT-PES: 67.67%
PAN-PRD-MC: 12.67%
PRI: 11.65%
PVEM: 3.34%
PANAL: 1.21%

So even assuming a 3-1 distribution for "alternative Morena" they could have still swept all seats:

Real Morena-PT-PES: 50.76%
Alternative Morena-PT-PES: 16.91%
PAN-PRD-MC: 12.67%
PRI: 11.65%
PVEM: 3.34%
PANAL: 1.21%

[Hash]

What were the dynamics in the Jalisco race that MC won?

The victorious candidate, Enrique Alfaro (former mayor of the suburban town of Tlajomulco from 2009 to 2012), was the strong runner-up in the 2012 gubernatorial election and was elected mayor of Guadalajara in 2015, his success carrying the MC to victories in the federal and state elections in 2015 (primarily in the Guadalajara metro and the tourist resort town of Puerto Vallarta). After his 2012 result and his success in 2015, Alfaro was always the favourite in this election and no other candidate had much of a chance of catching up with him.

Alfaro was rather popular as mayor of Tlajomulco (for the PRD), claiming that he transformed one of the "most corrupt municipalities" to the most transparent in the state, although his recent record in Guadalajara appears more controversial and divisive, receiving criticisms for his apparent inability to combat insecurity/criminality and several unpopular policies. He markets himself as a dynamic, young reformist with a strong social media presence, opposed to the old partidocracia and more directly in touch with 'average citizens'. Time will tell if this is genuine or total horsecrap. Shortly before the election, investigative journalist Anabel Hernández (who has published some hard-hitting and thoroughly researched books on political corruption and drug trafficking) published an article in Aristegui Noticias (which the state electoral institute ordered be taken down) which linked Alfaro - and several other former civil servants in Tlajomulco - to drug trafficking on the basis of a DOJ internal report and an older internal report from the Mexican SEMAR, basically accused of receiving money from two drug cartels (CJNG and Sinaloa) in exchange for protection and letting them go about their business.

The PAN in Jalisco has been nearly entirely destroyed by the last panista governor, Emilio González Márquez ('el gober piadoso'), whose administration was marred by massive corruption, wasteful spending, rising debt, higher criminal/narco violence, economic stagnation and several memorable controversies (proposing to donate a huge sum of public money for the construction of a sanctuary to Cristero martyrs, and an infamous drunk speech in 2008 which just underlined the callousness, arrogance and vulgarity of the governor). The PAN was highly divided in the 2012 elections (in which it finished a poor third with less than 20%), with outgoing governor González Márquez said - like Calderón federally - to have betrayed the party's own candidate and operated in Alfaro's favour.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Also, who could be considered the last genuine left-wing President of Mexico? Cardenas? Lopez Mateos?

I would argue Portillo(1976-1982).  He was the last economic nationalist Mexico President.

I remember reading Portillo actually presided over a resurgence of the right and himself moved in this direction at least in part of his term.

[Artaxerxes]

Also, who could be considered the last genuine left-wing President of Mexico? Cardenas? Lopez Mateos?

I would argue Portillo(1976-1982).  He was the last economic nationalist Mexico President.

I remember reading Portillo actually presided over a resurgence of the right and himself moved in this direction at least in part of his term.

I mean López Portillo did nationalize the entire Mexican banking system three months before leaving office.

[jaichind]

AMLO's pick for Minister of  Interior, Olga Sanchez, says that MORENA is likely to challenge the Puebla Governor election result.