Mexican State Elections 2008

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New Year - new round of state electons. Yesterday there were municipal and legislative elections in two smallish states: Quintana Roo (that's where Cancun is) and Baja California Sur. They are still counting, and, in particular, in Cancun the results are close, so the following is still subject to change.

Quintana Roo has 8 municipalities. Before the election PRI controlled 6, while PAN and PRD had one each (for simplicity I shall ignore the minor parties when they are in coalition with the majors).  Post-election the outcome seems to be the same, but the minority parties took different municipalities this time:

PRI hold (4 municipalities):  Othon Blanco (contains Chetumal, the state capital and second-largest city),  Jose Maria Morelos,  Solidaridad (contains Playa del Carmen), Lazaro Cardenas.

PRI gain from PAN (1 municpality): Cozumel

PRI gain from PRD (1 municipality): Felipe Carillo Puerto

PAN gain from PRI (1 municipality): Isla Mujeres

PRD gain from PRI (1 municpality): Benito Juarez - state's largest municipality, contains Cancun. Caution: w/ almost 82% counted PRD lead is very slight, less than 1 thousand votes out of over 100,000 votes cast

Overall, the result an improvment for PRD (instead of an obscur rural municipality they will be holding the state's largest city), not bad for PRI (they remain by far the largest force in state politics), and not too good for PAN (they exchange a larger resort for a smaller one).

In the legislative elections, it's a major victory by PRI. Of the 15 directly elected seats in the state congress, the party seems to be poised to take 14 (in brackets change from 2005):

PRI 14 seats (+7)
PAN 1 seat (-3)
PRD 0 seats (-4)

Results from Baja California Sur in the next post.

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Remote Baja California Sur - Mexico's smallest state in population - is a traditional PRD stronghold (in contrast to the neighboring PAN-controlled Baja California). This election confirms this repuatation, with PRD being on target to capture all the 5 of the state's municpalities (1 more than last time) and 24 out of 26 directly elected seats in the state congress.  Of the remaining 2 seats, 1 seems set to go to PRI and 1 to Panal - with PAN being locked out entirely.

Later this month there will be legislative elections in the PRI-controlled Hidalgo state (just north of Mexico City). After that there will be nothing till Nayarit votes in July. Later there will be elections Coahuila in September and Guerrero in October. Finally, in November Hidalgo will have its municipal elections. Unusually, no gubernatorial elections seem to be scheduled for the entire year (in fact, we may have none till a whole bunch of gubernatorial votes  set to coincide with the federal midterms in July 2009).