Mid-term elections in Mexico, July 5

Thanks, fbaezer.

(I only now found out that both the PRI as well as the PRD are members of the Socialist International.)

That's why they call them "the enemy brothers", Walter.

The PRI was first to belong to the IS, even if it is -in Marxists terms- a Bonapartist party (counter-revolutionary inside the revolution).
PRD was born in 1989, as a big fusion of the remnants of the old Socialist Unified Party, an important group of disgruntled priistas who thought their party was moving too much to the right and assorted smaller groups or splinters.

Every flag waving Mexican has a little priista inside of him/her, just (as I imagine) every flag waving Russian has a little Bolshevik inside. It's a love/hate attitude.

A few months ago, one of Calderón's cabinet member's cellphone was tapped, and he was caught saying: "I swear I miss PRI". He resigned a few days later.

In the 80s, we were watching the news -the usual Latin American turmoil and riots- and my small son asked me: "Why doesn't any of that happen in Mexico?". I was amazed at my answer: "Because we have PRI".

The PRI leader says her party is "progressive". I concede she is a progressive, but the party is a big mix of interest groups.

This map of electoral districts may attract nimh:



Dark green is PRI
Dark blue is PAN
Yellow is PRD
Light green is PRI/PVEM
Pinkish red is PT

The photo didn't load for me fb and I can't copy the URL. Could you post a link too?

Didn't link for me either. I can usually get those links (little blue box with a question mark) to show on my mac by using control and place image in a new window, but not this time. (Back when I had a pc, the little box would be red with an x, and one clicked on properties.)

Yes, there's an error.

From that website:


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Thanks a lot, Walter. Yes, I can see nimh getting into this..

Bookmark

The president of PAN just resigned.
Calderón starts his reshuffling.

I said I was going to write a bit about Mexico City's voting patterns.
They are very volatile.
According to pollsters, nearly two thirds of Mexico City voters split their votes. And often, is the elections have more than two rails, they split over the split. Voting for the same party in all races is seen as "rough" and "unsophisticated". Last time I did so was in 1985. I've heard party big-shots of all political colors confess they split their votes for some reason or another.
This leads to the 2009 weird results (for the local legislature):
PRD: 25.6%
PAN: 19.7%
PRI: 16.0%
PT: 10.3%
PVEM: 9.1%
PANAL: 3.8%
PSD: 2.5%
Convergencia: 2.4%
Null votes: 10.6%

And this is not counting into the fact that the PRD is divided into 2 warring factions.
I could dwell into a few surreal happenings (like voting for PT in the Iztapalapa burough -the Mexico City Bronx- is really voting for the PRD candidate who lost the internal election... but whose name appears on the ballot for PRD), but I won't.

Congress tally:

PRI 237 (+131)
PAN 143 (-63)
PRD 72 (-55)
PVEM 21 (+4)
PT 13 (-1)
PANAL 8 (-1)
Convergencia 6 (-11)
PSD 0 (-4)


A blast to the past. Mexico is doing the moonwalk!

I was tied up in meetings for far too long this afternoon. Eventually my hound came and gnawed though the ropes and got me free (an inside joke-sorry). I guess we knew PRI was going to do well, but is this the outcome you and pollsters projected?
In the abbreviated session of NPR's All Things Considered, nothing about the Mexican election. Nothing. Only an old story about the economy: oil revenue, remittances and tourism down.

Pollsters sighed in relief when the distance between PRI and PAN diminished a little. No one expected this type of landslide.



Typical. Democracy (elsewhere) is not spectacular.