Mexico Legislative and Governor elections June 6th 2021

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Sonora

The second largest state in Mexico by land area, Sonora – like Sinaloa – has been governed by the PRI for all but one term, despite the PAN’s historic strength in this part of northern Mexico.

The term of the state’s only non-priista governor to date, the PAN’s Guillermo Padrés (2009-2015) – a descendant of Plutarco Elías Calles, ended in disgrace. Padrés faced a series of scandals and controversies during his term – including a 53% increase in public debt, widespread protests in 2013 over a new tax on vehicle ownership, the illegal construction of a dam on his 3,670 ha. ranch and the extrajudicial kidnapping by his wife of a former housekeeper accused of stealing cash and jewellery (the housekeeper was later tortured by state police until she confessed and imprisoned without evidence for over 4 years). Padrés is also accused of tax fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, money laundering and other financial irregularities for millions of dollars. After being a fugitive for over a year, Padrés turned himself in in 2016 and was incarcerated. He was released on bail in 2019 as his case drags on.

Claudia Pavlovich (PRI), supported by old priista apparatchik and former governor Manlio Fabio Beltrones (himself mixed up in a long list of corruption affairs, including lots of rumoured narco ties), was elected in 2015.

AMLO swept Sonora in 2018, winning 59.7% of the vote against just 16.6% for Meade. Morena and its allies also won the senatorial contest, all seven federal electoral districts and obtained an absolute majority in the state congress. While the PRI retained control over more municipalities, Morena won the top eight most populated municipalities – the state capital of Hermosillo as well as Cajeme, Nogales, San Luis Río Colorado, Navojoa, Guaymas, Agua Prieta and Caborca. Facing a new hostile majority, the outgoing state congress in the summer of 2018 approved a controversial ‘veto law’ which gave the governor veto powers and increased executive powers at the expense of the state legislature. The SCJN ruled these amendments to be constitutional in March 2021.

Morena-PT-PVEM-PANAL’s candidate is the former federal Secretary of Security (2018-2020), Alfonso Durazo. Durazo’s gubernatorial ambitions were a poorly kept secret for quite a while, and he made them public October 2020. Since the 1990s, Durazo has been a member of four parties – the PRI, PAN, PRD and now Morena. He was Luis Donaldo Colosio’s private secretary until Colosio’s assassination in 1994, and later moved to support Vicente Fox and the PAN in 2000 and served as President Fox’s private secretary and presidential spokesperson. In 2004, he publicly broke with Fox and heavily criticized his administration. Since 2006, Durazo has been a close ally of AMLO. He was elected federal deputy in 2012 and senator in 2018, although he only served two months in the Senate before joining AMLO’s cabinet.

Durazo’s weakness is his mediocre record as secretary security and the federal government’s haphazard and contradictory security strategy. Continuing a trend which began under EPN, the homicide rate reached an all-time high of 27.4 in 2019 and was only barely lower (27) in 2020, with over 30,000 murders a year. Several cases have highlighted the administration’s shambolic security strategy. In October 2019, a brutal firefight erupted in Culiacán (Sinaloa) as the Sinaloa Cartel outmanned and outgunned security forces after they briefly arrested one of El Chapo’s son, Ovidio Guzmán. The culiacanazo forced Durazo to release Ovidio Guzmán to avoid an even bigger explosion of violence in the city, a humiliating defeat for the state at the hands of one of the main cartels.

In November 2019, nine members – three women and six children – of the Mormon LeBarón family (which held dual US-Mexican citizenship) were murdered by a small but bloody gang in northwestern Sonora. The LeBarón massacre continues to cause headaches for Durazo. In March 2021, a member of the family announced that he would sue Durazo for omission (failure to act), claiming that Durazo was informed of criminal groups’ presence in the area prior to the massacre. Durazo claims that he and his team “made the best effort” in the case.

In Bavispe, the Durazo family’s hometown, Durazo’s sister Celia Durazo is Morena’s mayoral candidate and faces Adam Langford (PRI-PAN-PRD), brother of Christina Marie Langford, one of the victims of the November 2019 massacre in Bavispe, and himself former mayor (2003-2006, 2009-2012)

Despite this weakness, Durazo is campaigning on security and judicial reforms, blaming the increase in violence in Sonora on the PRI state government.

The PRI-PAN-PRD’s candidate is former senator (2012-2018) Ernesto ‘El Borrego’ Gándara (ex-PRI). Gándara, who comes from a prominent elite family in Hermosillo, is a career politician who worked for several presidents and also served as mayor of the state capital between 2006 and 2008. He is the first cousin of Javier Gándara, his successor as mayor of Hermosillo (for the PAN) and PAN gubernatorial candidate in 2015. He left the PRI in 2020, but only to appear as an ‘independent’ civic candidate – backed by the PRI, PAN and PRD – for the governorship.

He has complained in private that he thinks that Pavlovich is working against him behind the scenes to favour Durazo, given Pavlovich and Beltrones’ tensions with PRI leader Alito Moreno. On the other hand, Durazo said that he distrusted the state government and accused priistas in government of interfering in the election.

The MC’s candidate is now the little-known Miguel Scott, who was named by the party in May after the original candidate – Ricardo Bours, the brother of former PRI governor Eduardo Bours (2003-2009) – dropped out and endorsed Gándara. The Bours are a billionaire business (and political) family – owners of the meat and egg producing company Bachoco and telecommunications company Megacable. From his time as governor, Eduardo Bours is still facing controversies and now a renewed judicial investigation into his responsibility in the ABC daycare fire in 2009 which killed 49 children. Although prosecutors had closed the case against him in 2013, in 2019 the social security institute (IMSS) filed a new complaint against Bours with the FGR. Ricardo Bours left the PRI in 2019 after 41 years.

Bours dropped out after the assassination of Abel Murrieta, the MC’s mayoral candidate in Cajeme, in May 2021. Murrieta was the LeBarón’s family lawyer, former state attorney general (2004-2012), state deputy and federal deputy (2015-2018). From his time as attorney general under Bours and Padrés, the parents of the victims of the ABC daycare fire accused him of negligence.

The other candidates are the former PAN mayor of Nogales Cuauhtémoc Galindo (RSP), the former PRI mayor of Guaymas Carlos Zatarain (PES) and Rosario Robles Robles (FxM).

Durazo has had the advantage in nearly every single poll but the race is still expected to be tight. A recent poll by Reforma had him leading Gándara by 6 (51-45) and the last poll in El Financiero back in April had him leading by 9 (46-37).


Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala is the smallest state in Mexico by land area after CDMX and is largely surrounded by the larger state of Puebla, to which it is quite closely linked. Currently ruled by the PRI for the last twelve years, the state has seen PRI, PRD and PAN governors and gubernatorial elections have been close since the late 1990s.

In 1998, Alfonso Sánchez Anaya, a former priista federal deputy, was elected governor with the support of the PRD – whose leader at the time was none other than AMLO. He has since remained a close ally of the president. In 2004, he controversially tried to be succeeded by his wife, María del Carmen Ramírez, but she finished third in a close three-way election which was won by another priista defector, standing for the PAN, Héctor Ortiz Ortiz (former mayor of Tlaxcala). The PRI regained the state in a close election in 2010 with Mariano González Zarur, the runner-up six years before.

In 2016, Marco Antonio Mena (PRI) was elected in another close race. In 2018, Tlaxcala was AMLO’s second-best state, winning 70.6% of the vote.

The Morena-PT-PVEM-PES Tlaxcala-PANAL coalition’s candidate is former senator and superdelegate Lorena Cuéllar. Cuéllar is another former priista who served as a PRI state deputy (2005-2007, 2011-2012) and mayor of Tlaxcala (2008-2010) before quitting the PRI in 2012 after a dispute over the party’s senatorial candidates with the governor and her uncle, Joaquín Cisneros Fernández. She accepted AMLO’s invitation to run for the Senate as the first candidate of the PRD-PT-MC coalition and won. Cuéllar, as the PRD-PT’s candidate, was the runner-up in the 2016 election, losing to Mena by less than 2.4% and 13,700 votes.

She left the PRD in 2017 and was elected federal deputy for Morena in 2018. She served only three months before she was appointed as the federal government’s superdelegate in Tlaxcala. As with other superdelegates, she was accused of taking advantage of her office and the government’s social programs to promote her image and favour her gubernatorial candidacy.

Both of her grandfathers served as governors (for the PRI obviously) – Joaquín Cisneros Molina (1957-1963) and Crisanto Cuéllar Abaroa (1970). As aforementioned, she is also the niece of former PRI senator Joaquín Cisneros Fernández.

Cuéllar was controversially preferred over other pre-candidates like Dulce María Silva, a businesswoman and wife of César Yáñez (a long-time AMLO ally and senior member of the presidential office), who denounced a ‘negotiation’ to impose Cuéllar and admitted her disappointment with AMLO in a leaked recording. Silva married Yáñez in an excessively ostentatious and frivolous fancy wedding in September 2018, with AMLO as one of the witnesses. The wedding sparked controversy for its apparent disconnect with AMLO’s rhetoric of austerity and his own past criticisms of politicians’ lavish lifestyles. Dulce María Silva was compensated with a ‘pluri’ candidacy for Morena.

The PRI-PAN-PRD-PS-PAC’s candidate is Anabell Ávalos (PRI), the former mayor of Tlaxcala (2017-2020). She has little support of the incumbent governor, who has stated that he would not interfere in the election, and her main surrogates are former governors Mariano González (PRI) and Héctor Ortiz (PAN).

The other candidates are former PRD state deputy Eréndira Jiménez (MC), ex-panista Juan Carlos Sánchez (RSP), Viviana Barbosa Bonola (FxM), Liliana Becerril (PES) and Evangelina Paredes (Impacto Social Sí, local party).

Cuéllar is the clear favourite, leading in most polls. The last poll from El Financiero, just released, showed her leading by 10 points, 50% to 40%, up from 8 points in April (44-36).

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This is my final of the 15 state gubernatorial profiles. I hope they were easy to read and informative!

Zacatecas

Zacatecas is a poor, largely mountainous state in north-central Mexico.

In 1998, Zacatecas became the first state outside of Mexico City to be won by the PRD, following the victory of priista defector Ricardo Monreal. Until being passed over by the PRI in the gubernatorial selection process, Monreal had been a federal deputy (1988-1991, 1997-1998) and alternate senator (1991-1997) and was, at the time, the PRI caucus’ majority whip in the lower house. Supported by the PRD, Monreal won the election. Since leaving office, Monreal has gone on to serve as PRD/PT senator (2006-2012, for the PRD until 2008 and PT until 2012), MC federal deputy (2012-2015) and head of the delegation of Cuauhtémoc, DF for Morena (2015-2017). Elected to the Senate in 2018, Monreal is now coordinator of Morena in the Senate and president of the political coordination board of the Senate – making him one of the most powerful legislative operators for the government.

As governor, Monreal was accused by his critics of corruption, handing out loans to allies, favouritism, nepotism, coopting the media, marginalizing the opposition, and weakening social movements.

In 2004, the PRD retained the state with the comfortable victory of former senator Amalia García, daughter of a former governor and veteran left-wing activist. García won the PRD’s nomination after blocking Monreal’s attempt to impose his dauphin, and García and her predecessor became sworn rivals and traded accusations of narco ties. García played up the seizure of 14 tons of marijuana in a warehouse owned by one of Monreal’s brothers, while the Monreal family spread rumours that García had ties to Los Zetas or could have been complicit in the escape of 53 inmates from a maximum-security prison in 2009.

The PRI regained the state in 2010 with the victory of Miguel Alonso Reyes, Ricardo Monreal’s former private secretary, who won 43.2% against 23.2% for the PRD. While the Monreal clan was behind the candidacy of David Monreal (PT), who finished fourth with 13.6%, the PRI-PVEM’s candidate was seen as the family’s plan B to defeat the PRD candidate hand-picked by García. David Monreal had even briefly dropped out of the race in early 2010 in an unsuccessful bid to consolidate a PRI-PT alliance behind Reyes. Today, Reyes faces accusations of illicit enrichment, embezzlement and money laundering.

Five years ago, Alejandro Tello Cristerna (PRI-PVEM-PANAL) – who had been Reyes’ finance secretary (2010-2012) and came presented as a ‘technocrat’ favoured by the PRI’s national leadership – defeated David Monreal (Morena) by 10.4% - 38.5% to 28.1%. The PRD-PAN’s candidate won just 18.4%. It was Morena’s best performance in the 2016 state elections.

Both recent priista administrations are perceived as failures, marred by corruption, growing debt, unfinished or white elephant infrastructure projects, violence and insecurity.

In 2018, AMLO won 48.1% in the state against 23.3% for Meade and 20.6% for Anaya. Morena won the most seats in the state congress (9 out of 30), but the PRI and PAN still won the most municipalities.

Once again, the Morena-PT-PVEM-PANAL coalition’s candidate is David Monreal. David, Ricardo’s younger brother, was mayor of the family’s home turf of Fresnillo (2007-2010), succeeding another brother, Rodolfo Monreal, and later senator (2012-2018). Since AMLO’s victory, David Monreal had been national coordinator of livestock in the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER). David has admitted that he obeys to two leaderships: that of AMLO and his brother Ricardo Monreal, who he calls ‘the guide of the movement’. The selection of David Monreal as Morena’s gubernatorial candidate, in the hopes that the third time’s the charm, displeased other factions within Morena, most notably senator José Narro Céspedes, a longstanding rival of the Monreal family.

The Monreal brothers are mixed up in the mysterious disappearance of Juan Carlos Guardado Méndez – David’s successor as mayor of Fresnillo (2010) – in 2011. The Guardado family are a business family with ties to the Monreal family – Ricardo Monreal’s wife is a first cousin of the Guardado Méndez – and Guardado’s family had financed David’s mayoral campaign but apparently felt that he was not rewarded as expected. In 2013, federal authorities dismantled a plot to assassinate the Monreal brothers. While authorities claimed that two of the men arrested were from the Zetas, in reality three of them were employees of Juan Carlos Guardado’s brother Arturo Guardado, who may have hired hitmen to kill the Monreal brothers.

Saúl Monreal, another of the Monreal brothers, is seeking re-election as mayor of Fresnillo, the family fiefdom. As mayor, he was criticized for spending public money on his daughter’s lavish fifteenth birthday party with over 600 guests, a pricey Colombian DJ and expensive food.

Monreal’s campaign has been hurt by several controversies and missteps. In April, a video showed David Monreal groping the butt of Morena’s mayoral candidate in Juchipila. He initially denied it as the creation of the ‘magic of technology’ and later downplayed it as an ‘involuntary touch’ taken out of context. The candidate herself defended Monreal as a respectful person and was angry that she was being ‘used’. Videos from other angles and of other moments of the same event also suggest that he probably groped more than once… A few days later, during a campaign event, Marco Flores of the Banda Jérez (now a Morena ‘pluri’ candidate) yelled arriba las pinches viejas (something like ‘get up, ing bitches’).

Three of the five women gubernatorial candidates (MC, PRI-PAN-PRD and PES) came together to publicly denounce Monreal and condemn violence against women. They also filed a complaint against Monreal and Marco Flores with the state electoral institute for gendered political violence.

The PRI-PAN-PRD’s candidate is senator (2018-2021) Claudia Anaya. Anaya is a former perredista who held public offices under the administrations of Ricardo Monreal and Amalia García, was a PRD federal deputy (2009-2012) and David Monreal’s ‘second formula’ senatorial candidate in 2012. She joined the PRI in 2013 and served as state deputy (2013-2015), federal deputy (2015-2018) and senator (since 2018). Anaya is considered close to EPN’s former finance secretary, Luis Videgaray.

Her candidacy was somewhat imposed by the national leaderships in Mexico City and displaced local political groups. The PRI – with the backing of the PAN and PRD – had been expected to support Adolfo Bonilla, state agriculture secretary and son of a former priista senator, who had the backing of Tello and Reyes. However, that name was rejected by the PRD national leadership.

The PES’ candidate is Guadalupe ‘Lupita’ Medina Padilla, a former PAN state deputy (2013-2016) from a traditional panista family (she’s related to former federal deputy and senator José Ramón Medina Padilla). She left the PAN in March 2021. Running a very socially conservative campaign replete with religious references, she has said that her candidacy is in response to a call from God and crediting God for giving her the leadership to be a candidate.

Among the PES’ candidates for state deputy, in district 1, is the former Morena mayor of Zacatecas, the capital, Ulises Mejía Haro. He had previously been blocked from seeking re-election in Zacatecas because of a sanction for gendered political violence (after making misogynistic comments about a city trustee). Just days ago, however, he got a favourable verdict from the regional chamber of the TEPJF allowing his candidacy, with the PES, to go ahead.

There were strong rumours that Morena senator José Narro was supporting Medina Padilla after being seen at a campaign event with her, but he later clarified that he was not supporting her (at least explicitly).

The MC’s candidate is Ana María Romo Fonseca, a former PRI state deputy and Miss Zacatecas 1987. Former PRD governor Amalia García Medina is now a MC ‘pluri’ candidate.

The other candidates are Miriam Zamora (FxM), Javier Valadez Becerra (Partido del Pueblo, local party) and Flavio Campos Miramontes (Paz para desarrollar Zacatecas, local party). Fernanda Salomé Perera (RSP), the first transgender woman to run for governor, dropped out and endorsed Monreal, while Bibiana Lizardo (Movimiento Dignidad Zacatecas, local party) withdrew in Anaya’s favour.

David Monreal began as the runaway favourite against a weak opponent, but his numbers took a very sharp hit in May – perhaps as the result of the viral groping video – and the race is now much closer, with some polls having Anaya leading. The last poll in May from El Financiero had him leading by 6 points (49 to 43), down from a 12-point lead in April. The last poll in Reforma had him leading Anaya by 5 points, 48 to 43. The same poll showed that 47% felt that the groping was inappropriate behaviour while 30% said it was an exaggeration to hurt him.

[jaichind]

These writeups on governor races are amazing !! Thanks.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Unless there has been some fundamental cultural change that I do not know about, basically every Mexican woman over the age of 30 who didn't graduate from a university would react to Monreal's behavior by thinking "what a dog! my husband's brother does the same thing to me" and then vote for him if they were already planning to do that.

One reason why there were large protests against violence against women in Mexico a few years ago is that it's a massive problem but that also implies that it's a cultural expectation that a substantial share of men are pervs who will routinely grope women in subways or publicly masturbate etc.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

These writeups on governor races are amazing !! Thanks.

This.

[jaichind]

I did a back-of-the-envelope estimate of all 300 district seats based on the assumption

a) MORENA mostly retains its 2018 base
b) PAN PRI PRD are able to transfer their votes to each other.

I get

MORENA-PVEM-PT     120
MORENA                    64
PAN-PRI-PRD             75
PAN                          31
PRI                             6
PRD                            0
MC                             4

PAN has a bunch of bastion seats that they were not willing to share with PRI and PRD but will end up winning anyway.

This assessment has AMLO bloc winning 184 out of 300 seats.  Enough of the 120 MORENA-PVEM-PT winners will be PVEM and PT (in name only of course) that MORENA should be able to get around the 8% rule and get all the PR seats due to them based on their vote share.

If you then assume that parties like PRD PVEM PT get above 3% to get PR seats but parties like PES FPM RSP fall below 3% to get PR seats then MORENA-PVEM-PT should get around 110 out of 200 PR seats which would take the total AMLO bloc seat count to 294 seats from 306 in 2018.

For AMLO to get to his goal of 334 out 500 seats for his bloc he has to hope that the PAN PRI PRD will not be able to shift their votes to each other.

[Hash]

RSP will run in 296 seats (new Leftist party)
FPM will run in 296 seats (MORENA splinter)
PES will run in 299 seats (Christian social conservative, ex-ally of MORENA.)  PES failed to win 3% in 2018 and got deregistered.  PES is trying to get around 3% this time around to become a registered party and get government funding.   

Just some minor corrections here. FxM (Force for Mexico) is not really a Morena splinter - it is perhaps an aspiring Morena satellite - but rather the property of Pedro Haces Barba (briefly Morena senator in 2018-9) and leader of the CATEM trade union confederation, which is styling itself as the 'new generation' of Mexican trade unionism accompanying the fourth transformation (in reality he has a dark priista past and is just as nasty and crooked as old charros). There are strong signals that Ricardo Monreal, Morena's leader in the Senate, is quietly supporting the party (his daughter is a pluri candidate for FxM). It is pretending to be a centrist progressive party, playing with feminist rhetoric and claiming to be the party of youth.

RSP (Progressive Social Networks) is pretending to be a centre-left party using a bunch of cool catchphrases. In reality it is owned by Elba Esther Gordillo, La Maestra, the infamously corrupt former leaders of the teachers' union SNTE. The party's leader is her son-in-law, her grandson is in the leadership, her daughter and nephew are among the party's candidates. Gordillo's main long-term goal is to retake control of the SNTE and is allied with AMLO, so RSP would be another Morena satellite party were it to survive. In its desperate bid to pass the 3% live-or-die threshold, it is running a wonderfully random bunch of memes, clowns, dumb celebrities, foul-mouthed actors, OnlyFans models, masked luchadores and cowboy cosplayers. My favourites are Alfredo Adame (an old Televisa soap actor) who is campaigning by telling voters to f!ck their mothers, or OnlyFans model Rocío Pina who is promising free new tits for women while posing semi-nude.

PES 2.0 is indeed the same old crap as PES 1.0, and not really 'former' allies of Morena - they still very much are Morena allies, with their added value being crude homophobia and anti-abortion histrionics. Their concerns for women's wellbeing is kind of belied by the fact that Hank is among their candidates.

[jaichind]

RSP will run in 296 seats (new Leftist party)
FPM will run in 296 seats (MORENA splinter)
PES will run in 299 seats (Christian social conservative, ex-ally of MORENA.)  PES failed to win 3% in 2018 and got deregistered.  PES is trying to get around 3% this time around to become a registered party and get government funding.   

Just some minor corrections here. FxM (Force for Mexico) is not really a Morena splinter - it is perhaps an aspiring Morena satellite - but rather the property of Pedro Haces Barba (briefly Morena senator in 2018-9) and leader of the CATEM trade union confederation, which is styling itself as the 'new generation' of Mexican trade unionism accompanying the fourth transformation (in reality he has a dark priista past and is just as nasty and crooked as old charros). There are strong signals that Ricardo Monreal, Morena's leader in the Senate, is quietly supporting the party (his daughter is a pluri candidate for FxM). It is pretending to be a centrist progressive party, playing with feminist rhetoric and claiming to be the party of youth.

RSP (Progressive Social Networks) is pretending to be a centre-left party using a bunch of cool catchphrases. In reality it is owned by Elba Esther Gordillo, La Maestra, the infamously corrupt former leaders of the teachers' union SNTE. The party's leader is her son-in-law, her grandson is in the leadership, her daughter and nephew are among the party's candidates. Gordillo's main long-term goal is to retake control of the SNTE and is allied with AMLO, so RSP would be another Morena satellite party were it to survive. In its desperate bid to pass the 3% live-or-die threshold, it is running a wonderfully random bunch of memes, clowns, dumb celebrities, foul-mouthed actors, OnlyFans models, masked luchadores and cowboy cosplayers. My favourites are Alfredo Adame (an old Televisa soap actor) who is campaigning by telling voters to f!ck their mothers, or OnlyFans model Rocío Pina who is promising free new tits for women while posing semi-nude.

PES 2.0 is indeed the same old crap as PES 1.0, and not really 'former' allies of Morena - they still very much are Morena allies, with their added value being crude homophobia and anti-abortion histrionics. Their concerns for women's wellbeing is kind of belied by the fact that Hank is among their candidates.

How interesting.   I thought Esther Gordillo and AMLO were on very bad terms.  I had not idea that she is now allied with AMLO.  Was not PANAL a Esther Gordillo party ?  I guess with PANAL gone at the national after the 2018 she is forming another political party.

[jaichind]

I went back and looked at the MORENA-PVEM-PT and PAN-PRI-PVEM coalition agreements and was able to get the party ID of the candidate for the seats they are in alliance in.  

I was able then to map that onto my back-of-the-envelope projects based on 2018 results which gives us


MORENA-PVEM-PT     120
    MORENA                     62
    PVEM                          22
    PT                              36
MORENA                    64

PAN-PRI-PRD             75
   PAN                            40
   PRI                            18
   PRD                           17
PAN                          31
PRI                             6
PRD                            0

MC                             4

Which gives us district seats by party

MORENA      126
PVEM            22
PT                36
PAN              71
PRI               24
PRD              17
MC                 4

Obviously there has been churn since 2018 so these numbers are going to be off.  But a couple of interesting facts about these numbers  are PAN >> PRI and PT>PVEM.   The reason they are interesting is most media projections have either PAN and PRI neck to neck in terms of seats or a small PAN edge over PRI and at the same the most media projections PVEM with more total seats than PT.  I am sure once we add in PR seats the gap between PVEM and PT will narrow.  

I have no idea what the result will be but my back-of-the-envelope model seems to indicate that there will be a wide gap between the number of total seats PAN wins and PRI wins given the lean of the seats that they are contesting.  It will be interesting to see election night if my back-of-the-envelope model is correct or the media poll projections.

[xelas81]

RSP will run in 296 seats (new Leftist party)
FPM will run in 296 seats (MORENA splinter)
PES will run in 299 seats (Christian social conservative, ex-ally of MORENA.)  PES failed to win 3% in 2018 and got deregistered.  PES is trying to get around 3% this time around to become a registered party and get government funding.   

Just some minor corrections here. FxM (Force for Mexico) is not really a Morena splinter - it is perhaps an aspiring Morena satellite - but rather the property of Pedro Haces Barba (briefly Morena senator in 2018-9) and leader of the CATEM trade union confederation, which is styling itself as the 'new generation' of Mexican trade unionism accompanying the fourth transformation (in reality he has a dark priista past and is just as nasty and crooked as old charros). There are strong signals that Ricardo Monreal, Morena's leader in the Senate, is quietly supporting the party (his daughter is a pluri candidate for FxM). It is pretending to be a centrist progressive party, playing with feminist rhetoric and claiming to be the party of youth.

RSP (Progressive Social Networks) is pretending to be a centre-left party using a bunch of cool catchphrases. In reality it is owned by Elba Esther Gordillo, La Maestra, the infamously corrupt former leaders of the teachers' union SNTE. The party's leader is her son-in-law, her grandson is in the leadership, her daughter and nephew are among the party's candidates. Gordillo's main long-term goal is to retake control of the SNTE and is allied with AMLO, so RSP would be another Morena satellite party were it to survive. In its desperate bid to pass the 3% live-or-die threshold, it is running a wonderfully random bunch of memes, clowns, dumb celebrities, foul-mouthed actors, OnlyFans models, masked luchadores and cowboy cosplayers. My favourites are Alfredo Adame (an old Televisa soap actor) who is campaigning by telling voters to f!ck their mothers, or OnlyFans model Rocío Pina who is promising free new tits for women while posing semi-nude.

PES 2.0 is indeed the same old crap as PES 1.0, and not really 'former' allies of Morena - they still very much are Morena allies, with their added value being crude homophobia and anti-abortion histrionics. Their concerns for women's wellbeing is kind of belied by the fact that Hank is among their candidates.

So all three parties goal is to prove their "worth" by passing the 3% threshold and try to join MORENA lead alliance in 2024?

[Terry the Fat Shark]

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1401403478858035202

[jaichind]

Something interesting I just noticed.

Just saw this photo on one of the Mexico political sites I was looking at.  It appears to be called "saludo a la bandera" which the way the Mexicans give respects to the Mexican Flag and is stipulated by the Mexican laws during the Flag ceremony in official and sports events where the Flag is involved.


The reason I was interested in looking this up is because this salute is exactly the same as the India Hindu nationalist RSS salute.

Here is India PM Modi doing the RSS salute with other key members of the RSS which Modi also belongs to.

[jaichind]

This is what a Lower House ballot will look like. 



The idea is even if parties have alliances and have a joint candidate the vote still should indicate their party preference (or vote for independent candidate if any) to be the input to compute the PR seat allocations.

[jaichind]

If you look at the 2018 average vote share of each alliance party in seats that were allocated to each alliance partner you get
 
                                        2018
2021        seats     MORENA     PVEM       PT       Total
MORENA     88       39.62%    4.82%  4.06%     48.50%
PVEM         50        33.20%   5.89%   3.87%     42.96%
PT             45        39.70%   4.38%   5.62%     49.70%

MORENA and PT seats are pretty much identical which pretty much means all PT candidates are all de facto MORENA candidates just to get around the 8% rule.  PVEM has a worse set of seats than MORENA and PT which implies PVEM did push for candidates under its control and in return got harder to win seats.


2021       seats       PAN           PRI       PRD      Total
PAN           72        22.34%   15.66%   3.96%   41.96%
PRI            77        12.80%   18.96%   5.71%   37.47%
PRD           70        11.45%   14.25%   9.39%   35.09%

The seats allocated clearly are correlated to the lean of each seat.   PAN has the better seats and PRD has the worst seats.  This sort of gives you a sense of the pecking order in terms of negotiation power between these three parties.  Also vote transfer efficiency will be a key issue for this alliance given how the vote are dispersed  across all 3 parties.

[Hash]

How interesting.   I thought Esther Gordillo and AMLO were on very bad terms.  I had not idea that she is now allied with AMLO.  Was not PANAL a Esther Gordillo party ?  I guess with PANAL gone at the national after the 2018 she is forming another political party.

Gordillo's cronies (her family members) publicly supported AMLO from late 2017/early 2018, and AMLO signalled that they were welcome by significantly shifting his opinion on her - after holding her responsible for the 'fraud' in 2006 and considering her part of the 'mafia of power', he is now saying that there's no scandal to be made about her, or that the 'law was twisted' in her case. They both shared a common opposition to EPN's education reform, which has since been repealed and replaced.

PANAL was indeed initially owned by Gordillo, although she lost control of it during EPN's sexenio after her arrest and while it was still owned by the SNTE (now controlled by 'traitors' who 'betrayed' her after 2013), the party became a PRI satellite, probably as the then-PRI government needed to find a modus vivendi with the SNTE to protect its education reforms against the protests of the more radical unions. After PANAL lost its registration, a group tried to resurrect it as a political party, but its registration was denied because of the overwhelming evidence of the huge role of the SNTE its creation.

So all three parties goal is to prove their "worth" by passing the 3% threshold and try to join MORENA lead alliance in 2024?

In theory, yes, that'd be my guess. But these parties are all opportunists and three years is a very long time, so if the winds blow differently, their attitude might change. After all, until 2017, there were strong indications that PES 1.0 had some underhanded support from PRI factions, namely Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong's group in Hidalgo, and a lot of people therefore assumed it would ally with the PRI (as it did in the 2017 Edomex state elections). Of course, Osorio Chong wasn't the candidate in 2018 so we'll never know whether the PES would have supported him in an alternate reality where he was the candidate...

[Hash]

The idea is even if parties have alliances and have a joint candidate the vote still should indicate their party preference (or vote for independent candidate if any) to be the input to compute the PR seat allocations.

FTR, you can also vote for any combination of two or more parties in coalition. For example, with a Morena-PT-PVEM coalition candidate, you can vote individually for any of these parties or vote Morena+PT, Morena+PVEM, PVEM+PT or Morena+PT+PVEM. Such votes in combination get counted as one vote for the district candidate, and votes in combination are then divided equally between the parties in question for the PR calculations (i.e. 200 votes for Morena+PT would be divided equally, 100 votes for each).

[JM1295]

How do you guys see the federal/governor elections playing out? I see MORENA maintaining a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but losing their key two-thirds majority. The governor elections should be very interesting as a lot of them have become competitive and tightened up recently. I predict the following:

MORENA wins: BC, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala, Zacatecas
PRI/PAN/PRD wins: BCS, Chihuahua, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi
MC: Campeche, Nuevo Leon

Zacatecas, Campeche, and Chihuahua are the ones I'm most unsure of and closest to tossups, but these are my predictions. PRI would be down to like 5 governors if this holds lol and MORENA up to half of Mexico's governors.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

This is what a Lower House ballot will look like. 

[ img ]

The idea is even if parties have alliances and have a joint candidate the vote still should indicate their party preference (or vote for independent candidate if any) to be the input to compute the PR seat allocations.

How does voting for an "independent candidates" party practically work? Do they just go towards the most popular independent candidate?

[jaichind]

How do you guys see the federal/governor elections playing out? I see MORENA maintaining a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but losing their key two-thirds majority. The governor elections should be very interesting as a lot of them have become competitive and tightened up recently. I predict the following:

MORENA wins: BC, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala, Zacatecas
PRI/PAN/PRD wins: BCS, Chihuahua, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi
MC: Campeche, Nuevo Leon

Zacatecas, Campeche, and Chihuahua are the ones I'm most unsure of and closest to tossups, but these are my predictions. PRI would be down to like 5 governors if this holds lol and MORENA up to half of Mexico's governors.

I do not know that much by my guess for governor races are

Baja California:   MORENA-PVEM-PT
Baja California Sur:  PAN-PRI-PRD
Campeche:   MORENA-PT
Chihuahua:   PAN-PRD
Colima:   MORENA-PANAL
Guerrero:  MORENA
Michoacán:   MORENA-PT
Nayarit :  MORENA-PVEM-PT-PANAL
Nuevo León: MC
Querétaro:  PAN
San Luis Potosí:  PAN-PRI-PRD
Sinaloa:  MORENA
Sonora:  MORENA-PVEM-PT-PANAL
Tlaxcala:   MORENA-PVEM-PT-PANAL-PES
Zacatecas:  MORENA-PVEM-PT-PANAL

MORENA edges out PRI in all the MORENA-PRI marginals

As for the Congress my back-of-the-envelope seat count for MORENA-PVEM-PT of around 294 I think represents the floor for the AMLO bloc since that assumes that PAN-PRI-PRD are able to perfectly transfer their votes to each other which I am sure would be the case.  In the end I think the AMLO bloc will be around 306 seats they (MORENA-PT-PES) got in 2018.

[jaichind]

This is what a Lower House ballot will look like. 

[ img ]

The idea is even if parties have alliances and have a joint candidate the vote still should indicate their party preference (or vote for independent candidate if any) to be the input to compute the PR seat allocations.

How does voting for an "independent candidates" party practically work? Do they just go towards the most popular independent candidate?

Well the district in question the impact is simple, if the independent candidate wins the most vote he/she is the winner. For PR purpose a vote for an independent candidate is a wasted vote.

The ROC had a similar system like this in 1992-2004 where you had multi-member districts and the vote for a candidate with a party label counted toward that party's PR seat allocation where a vote for an independent candidate (which is more likely given the fact that the seats are multi-member) is a wasted vote from a PR seat allocation point of view.   Starting in 2008 ROC legislative elections shifted to two vote system with one vote for a single member district and one vote for party for the purpose of PR seats which is just like Japan but without the best loser option to be elected on the PR slate. 

[jaichind]

El Financiero exit polls

Campeche:   Too close to call between  MORENA-PT and PRI-PAN-PRD
Nuevo León: Too close to call between PRI-PRD and MC
Querétaro:  PAN
Tlaxcala:   MORENA-PVEM-PT-PANAL-PES
Zacatecas:  MORENA-PVEM-PT-PANAL

The Compeche too close to call is bad news for MORENA landslide narrative

[JM1295]

Wow MC not even being in contention in Campeche is interesting. The polls were super close in the state, but MC was typically leading in the polls. Early results look solid for MORENA so far.

[jaichind]

Given how the El Financiero exit polls went it seems clear that Massive Caller has a PAN bias this cycle.

[jaichind]

Wow MC not even being in contention in Campeche is interesting. The polls were super close in the state, but MC was typically leading in the polls. Early results look solid for MORENA so far.

Yeah. Given the exit polls so far this night looks like it is not going great for MC.

[JM1295]

^We could see MORENA walk away with 12/15 governorships if that's the case, though BCS would be a hard swing for MORENA.