The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) appeared to have won last Sunday’s gubernatorial election in Estado de Mexico but the narrowness of the result means they can take nothing for granted when the nation votes to elect a new president in 2018.
On Thursday evening, with 98 percent of the vote counted, the PRI’s Alfredo del Mazo lead his nearest rival, Delfina Vasquez of the leftist Morena Party, by less than three percent – 33.78 to 30.87.
Although recounts were taking place in several districts, they are unlikely to be significant enough to affect the result, election officials confirmed.
While the result will be a relief for the PRI – Estado de Mexico has been a bastion of power for the party for decades – it will be viewed as a Pyrrhic victory for Morena and its standard bearer Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Defeat for the PRI would have been disastrous and provided Lopez Obrador with the perfect platform to launch his expected third bid for the presidency.
As anticipated, the fiery politician immediately cried foul, demanding a full recount of the votes in Estado de Mexico and claiming the PRI had won the election fraudulently. Around 250 cases of irregularities had been filed in the lead up to Sunday’s vote, and many more were reported throughout the day.
But even if the protests go nowhere, Sunday’s election has already set a marker for 2018. Two-thirds of the votes in Estado de Mexico went to candidates other than the PRI, a party that has been accustomed to steamrolling its opponents over the years. It was only the three-way split of the opposition vote that allowed the PRI to sneak back into power.
Del Mazo and other senior PRI figures claimed the win was a victory over populism, arguing voters had rejected “Venezuelan politics.”
However, political analysts pointed out that the PRI only managed a narrow victory after outspending the other parties by a huge margin.
Lopez Obrador told media that Morena has been strengthened by the result but did not reveal how far he will take the allegations of fraud. After the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections, he called his supporters onto the streets for large scale protests and sit-ins, alienating many sectors of society. This time, with the momentum for 2018 clearly behind him, Lopez Obrador may decide to be more cautious and bide his time to see whether he can grow his base around the country.
In two other gubernatorial elections Sunday, an odd-couple coalition between the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) defeated the PRI candidate. Whether such a coalition could work on national scale next year is debatable, but the prospect will give cause for concern to both the PRI and Morena.
In addition, PRI only retained the state of Coahuila by the narrowest of margins: 1.5 percent. Candidates there have also alleged anomalies, although the president of the state’s Electoral Institute said they do not constitute a reason to annul the vote.