Mexican Elections 2024

The key for Mexican democracy will be the composition of Congress.

Mexican voters tend, relatively to other countries, to divide their votes.
The supermajority Sheinbaum needs to change the Constitution (two thirds) is almost impossible, so the question is if Morena gathers a simple majority or falls short (remember that the composition of Congress in Mexico is mixed, and ends up, usually, as quite proportional (no party can get more than 8% of the seats over their voting percentage).

The importance is that Sheinbaum said, in the last presidential debate, that she is not willing to negotiate anything with any of the opposition parties.
She also specified she doesn’t believe in the separation of powers. The judiciary should “obey the people” and Congress should follow the government.
(I was undecided between Máynez and Gálvez, that day Sheinbaum, who lies with a poker face, convinced me: I’ll vote Gálvez).

Galvez promises to conquer crime, but hasn't really come forward with a plan in how to address the cartels and its utter criminal behavior. Her CV is impressive and she certainly has tenacity to go this far, considering where she came from. Obrador's "hugs and no bullets" hasn't gone far and it's fair to say that Sheinbaum won't address the elephant in the room either.

With Galvez campaigning against the ever rising crime rate, one would have hoped she came forward with a solid plan, no?

May the best woman win that race.

Making the rounds on Twitter—a picture of Sheinbaum, smiling and standing next to Larry Fink…

Same as it ever was.

Sorry about the delay, rough working days for a journalist...

As you may know, it was a landslide

Sheinbaum 60%
Gálvez 27%
Máynez 10%

The only pollsters who were near the result were the ones most people indicated as partisan.

Sheinbaum won in all but one of the states. And she brought coattails with her.

Mexico City was supposed to be a close race, since the parties of the Front had more votes than the Morena parties in 2021. It wasn't

Brugada (Morena) : 52%
Taboada (Front): 38%
Chertorivski (Citizens Movement) 7%

The Front managed to keep 5 of the 7 alcaldías (counties, municipalities) in the city it held (out of 16). Notably, it could still hold Cuauhtémoc , which includes Mexico City's downtown.

There were 8 governorships in dispute. 5 of them held by Morena.
Out of those 5, races in Morelos and Veracruz were supposed to be close. They were not. Veracruz was indeed, another landslide, though not comparable to Morena's strongholds in the South: Tabasco and Chiapas, who had nearly "soviet" percentages: around 80% for the winner.
The state of Yucatan was supposed to be a safe seat for the Front. Morena won narrowly.
The only states kept by the opposition were the important state of Jalisco (governed by Movimiento Ciudadano) and Guanajuato (by PAN, the conservative party).

The races for Congress were another massacre. Both in the House and the Senate.
The discussion now is the assignment of the proportional seats: there is a limit for "overrepresentation", and the Morena coalition disguised some of the Morena candidates as Greens or Workers Party, to maximize representation.
If that interpretation succeeds, the ruling coalition will have a supermajority (enough to make changes in the Constitution) in the lower house and would be very near it in the Senate.

As for individual races go, the big news in the Senate was the loss of Movimiento Ciudadano's Luis Donaldo Colosio in the state of Nuevo León (he is the former major of Monterrey and son of PRI's presidential candidate of the same name who was slain in 1994).

In regard to political parties:

Big winners:
Movimiento Ciudadano: with over 10% of the vote in all federal races, it is now the 3rd biggest party, even above PRI, the party who ruled the country for 70 years. It has grown fivefold over the last six years.
Their best bet: not listening to the song of sirens of a big opposition front.

PVEM (Fake Greens): with over 7% of the vote, they were able to catch a lot of the non-Morena votes for Sheinbaum and their coalition, anad were also very clever in putting their candidates in the right place. This opportunistic party, if the Morena coalition scheme goes well, may end up with as many representatives as PAN.

PT (Workers party), with more than 5%, it was another beneficiary of the landslide (this time gathering votes from the left side of the Morena coalition)

Morena, with more that 40% of the vote, has become THE ruling party of Mexico.

Loser:
PAN (National Action Party), with 17% of the vote, the conservatives have halved in little over a decade, and are right just where they were 6 years ago. Their alliance with PRI and PRD proved futile.

Big losers:
PRI , the ruling party for decades has now about 10% of the vote, and has become sort of a zombie, or a sinking ship, with many rats fleeing (usually to Morena) in order to survive,

It was supposed that Xóchitl Gálvez's independence would clean the image of PAN and PRI. What happened is that PAN, and mostly PRI, stained the image of Gálvez.

PRD: The former big left-wing party, this time allied with the center-right, will probably lose its registry, having received below 3% of the votes. This means dissapearance. A sad ending for the heirs of the Mexican Communist Party.

Finally, exit polls say that:
Sheinbaum won in all age-groups (the older the voter, the bigger the margin)
She won at all income levels, excepting those households who earn more than 50,000 US dollars a year. Her biggest strength was in the poor-but-not-very-poor (around 7,500 a year).
Sheinbaum won in all schooling levels, excepting those with postgraduate studies (the lower the school level, the higher the percentage for Sheinbaum).

Gálvez kept what I would call "a PAN voter profile": very clear cut in income, with a direct correlation, with a preference for people with some college, Catholics, a middle aged.

Máynez was strong with the young urban generation, with a clear correlation to schooling (not as strong in income mostly because his electorate is young).

Gálvez of course didn't come with a solid plan. The biggest thing she said is that she was going to build a "megajail" for the violent criminals. This was seen as the same "punitive" strategy of former president Calderón, responsible of the rise of violence in the first place.
Sheinbaum was also very generalistic on the matter. She kept on saying "we must adress the roots", meaning lack of opportunities for young people.
Máynez was the one with a more detailed plan. For legalization of marihuana, and fight against fentanyl and extortion by the cartels (which has risen with AMLO). For reinforcing State and local police, with better wages, instead of centralizing it in the militarized National Guard.

BUT, even if violence and security is THE aspect in which AMLO's government is the least approoved, it was not the center of the campaigns (maybe Xóchitl's slogan: "for a Mexico without fear").

The center of the campaign can be read as follows:
Do you want a powerful government that guarantees you social help in cash and pledges to fight inequality, or do you prefer a democratic government that cares about a balance of power, and only promises you not to withdraw the social help you already have?
The people chose overwhelmingly for the former. A strong democracy is less important than a personal wallet with at least some money.

At the end, Colosio Jr. did make the Senate, by a 0.5 percent difference.
It was the minimum expected for a potential presidential candidate for 2030.