Mexico Elections: PRI fails to win congressional majority
The new president’s party, only gained 36 percent of congressional seats.
By MANUEL RUEDA
Mexicans did not only pick a new president on Sunday. They also had the chance to vote for congressmen and senators who will represent them in Mexico’s federal congress over the next three years.
Mexico’s new president Enrique Peña Nieto failed to win a majority in the house of representatives. His party, the PRI and its allies at the Green Party, only managed to win 36 percent of congressional seats during Sunday’s election. Meanwhile, leftist parties allied with second place candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador got 28 percent of seats in the 500 member house of representatives.
These results fly in the face of a previous projection by polling firm Mitofsky, which had estimated that the PRI could gain more than 50 percent of congressional seats during Sunday’s elections.
The results also suggest that Peña Nieto will have to engage in a good amount of coalition building to get Congress to approve his budget. The new president of Mexico will also have to work with opposition parties in Congress to pass key reforms in sectors like energy, education and telecomms.
Watch this: Enrique Peña Nieto’s supporters celebrated his victory on Sunday night. But the PRI did not fare so well in congressional races.
There were also six state governorships up for grabs on Sunday, and lots of local posts such as elections for the state legislature.
The PRI and the Green Party did well in the states of Chiapas and Yucatan, but lost to the leftist PRD party in Tabasco, Morelos and Mexico City, which elected a new mayor on Sunday.
In Jalisco, a state that had been ruled by the conservative National Action Party [PAN] for the past 18 years, the PRI’s candidate for governor, Aristóteles Sandoval came out on top. PRI candidates allied with Sandoval also won most seats in the state legislature.
But there’s a little corner of Jalisco that did not succumb to PRI domination.
Luis Guillermo Martinez Mora, a PAN candidate for the Jalisco State legislature.
District 10, which has elected PAN representatives for the past 24 years, once again voted for a candidate from that conservative party, picking Luis Guillermo Martinez Mora for the state legislature, over the young PRI candidate, Roberto de Alba.
Last week we reported on the colorful race in the mostly middle class district 10. It turns out Martinez had a solid victory over De Alba, beating him by 12 percentage points.
(Photo: Manuel Rueda)
