Mexico presidential election aftermath: What were the results?

Just a little bit to satisfy One month until the presidential election The results of June 2 are still being debated for their importance and significance for Mexican democracy. Why? What is the significance and impact of the victory of the “Let’s Continue to Make History” coalition, made up of the Workers’ Party (PT), the Green Party (PV) and the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), and its candidate Claudia Sheinbaum?

1. Relevance of numbers

On the first Sunday of June 2024, more than 60 million citizens voted. This was the highest participation rate in presidential elections to date: 3 million more than in 2018 and nearly 10 million more than in 2012, but participation and abstention rates remained at an average of 60%. They were 40% respectively, which has been the case since the presidential election in 2000. The reason for the above is that by June 2024, although the number of votes increased by 6% compared to 2018, the nominal voter list, the registered voter list, increased by 10% (9,200,000 votes).

Another relevant factor is the share of the votes won by the winning candidate: Sheinbaum received 60% of the vote, 18 percentage points higher than the average share of the vote for the winner of Mexican presidential elections since 2000 (42%). President López Obrador received slightly more than 5,800,000 votes. In addition to this, Sheinbaum’s advantage or margin of victory over the second and third place winners was the largest in any presidential election in the past 24 years, at 33 and 50 percentage points respectively.

The elections confirm the permanence of the unity government. Sheinbaum must obtain an absolute majority (251/500 MPs) and will likely recover the qualified majority lost by the Morena party and its allies in the 2021 mid-term elections (333/500 MPs). The ruling coalition has a total of 364 deputies, 30 more than in 2018.

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2. Renovation of the second floor

In the words of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the victory in July 2018 meant the beginning of what he called the Fourth Transformation, a regime change based on “the creation of a welfare state and guaranteeing the people’s rights to health, education and social security.”

It reads as follows: “The state will work to reduce social inequalities and will not continue to replace social justice from the government agenda.” Among other things, the so-called 4T political program openly opposes the market and so-called neoliberalism, describing it as a limited and corrupt economic model, while trying to reassess the nature of social welfare state.

The victory of the 4Ts in 2018 and their continuation in 2024 must be seen as a recognition of the lack of effectiveness of an economic model based on market regulation that does not bring about improvements in living conditions that have changed in the first two decades of this century. Since the creation of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and now with Morena, the denunciation of the neoliberal model has become part of the founding myth of the Mexican left.

In the advancement of this project led by López Obrador and Sheinbaum, we seek to save the social foundations, the nature of welfare and the welfare state through social policies, with the motto “For the good of all, first of the poor”. Different programs, mostly based on direct income transfers. At the same time, populist governments constantly complain that representative institutions do not respond to the interests and preferences of citizens in the political arena.

Speeches during the five years of government and the 2024 presidential campaign focused on the need to reform the Mexican political system in order to 1) guarantee/continue to guarantee social well-being through distributive welfare policies and 2) crystallize public opinion.

In this context, the current government has launched a campaign that extends to the electoral sphere, where it is crucial for the President of the Republic to win not only the federal executive power, but also a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies (365 seats) and the Senate (85).

In this way, the 4T will not face obstacles in the implementation of its reforms and policies, especially the implementation of the so-called Plan C, which basically consists in reforming the judiciary in two fundamental aspects: 1) reducing the integration of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) and 2) the representatives of the judicial power are elected by popular vote.

The opposition organized a speech aimed at defending status quo The judiciary as a guarantor of impartiality; He defended the National Electoral Institute (INE), which had come under severe attack from the President, and in general defended the concept of procedural democracy, the elaboration of which guided the process of change and transition in our country in the 1980s and 1990s. This is relevant given that the 4Ts have constantly pointed out that the functioning of representative democracy has not led to an improvement in the living standards of the population.

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The verdict of the “good” people is a promise of continuity in the fourth shift. This continuity foreshadows profound changes, including the dismantling of the judiciary; while some argue that this is necessary to put an end to injustice and corruption, the fact is that the nation’s highest court has not been comfortable for the president throughout his six-year term.

On the other hand, the victory of the 4T and its candidates laid the foundation for a deep disappointment with the market-oriented economic model, which cannot be translated into concrete benefits for the majority of people.

The losers of reform, those who have been excluded for 30 years and now their descendants, have no incentive to vote for the opposition, which, in the political and media imagination, is responsible for their situation. Marginalization and poverty levels With no substantial improvements and the country’s economic growth not even reaching 1% (0.8%) during these six years in office, people are reluctant to vote for those they believe will put them in a marginalized or impoverished situation.

In less than six years, voting for Morena and his allies meant choosing the least bad. And while the least bad was something we already knew in Mexico (an inefficient and poorly managed interventionist state at the time), today it returns in the form of social programs with direct income transfers, and hard cash has a profound impact on elections.

The power of social programs was so great that even Xochitl Gálvez had to promise that he would not abolish them if he won, and many former politicians, such as former President Vicente Fox, began to take credit for their creation, even though it was López Obrador who began this open strategy of dependency when he was head of the Mexico City government between 2000 and 2006.

The opposition was taken aback; a bland and contentless generational change passed through the Civic Movement Party and its candidates, but they received only 10% of the vote. Today, the least bad means voting for the establishment of authority, the accumulation of power and the consolidation of illiberal democracy.

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Author: Carlos Luis Sánchez y Sánchez, PhD in Political Science from FLACSO, Mexico, Professor/Researcher at the School of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is currently the Director of the Mexican Public Opinion Magazine of FCPYS/UNAM.