Toluca, Mexico – Mexico’s largest leftist party had a surprisingly strong showing Monday in elections in Mexico’s most-populous state, a race seen as a key test of party forces less than four months before the July 2 presidential balloting.
With about 88 percent of the votes tallied from Sunday’s election, the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, gained 31.27 percent of votes for Mexico State’s 75 legislative seats, slightly below the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which narrowly retained its lead, with 31.48 percent of votes. The PRD long had represented the third-largest force in Mexico State.
The conservative National Action Party of President Vicente Fox fell into third place with 28.51 percent of the votes.
The PRI holds the governorship of Mexico State, which was not up for grabs in Sunday’s election.
The left had long seen the race as a test of whether the appeal of its front-running presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – the former mayor of neighboring Mexico City – could lift the rest of the party ticket.
A new poll published Monday showed Lopez Obrador had widened his lead to 10 points over his closest rival, National Action’s Felipe Calderon, and 18 points over the PRI candidate, Roberto Madrazo.
Earlier, PRD Sen. Cesar Raul Ojeda said that “we think we will be able to make progress in areas where we didn’t have much presence before.” “Our candidate leads in polls of in the presidential race,” Ojeda said, “and for us, this (Sunday’s race) will be a good indicator of how those trends are becoming consolidated in states where previously we were the third-largest party.” Mexico State loops around the west, north and east of Mexico City and most of its people live in massive suburbs of the nation’s capital. With 14 million people, it holds about 13 percent of the country’s population.
The rapidly growing state is a sort of an electoral laboratory: it includes the capital’s toniest suburbs and its most squalid slums, as well as traditional Indian farming villages and sprawling industrial parks.
It’s also been increasingly politically volatile.
The PRI has lost many mayoral races in recent years to the PRD or the PAN.
Some voters held true to the party that has long dominated the state, despite its apparently slim chances in the presidential race.
“Being a PRI supporter is like being a sports fan, you don;t change colors easily,” said Genoveno Mejia, 67, an accountant who was waiting to vote.
The PRI also has been hurt by widespread media reports alleging that former Gov. Arturo Montiel saw a dramatic increase in his wealth while in office.
Some expressed disenchantment with the unfulfilled promises of the administration of President Vicente Fox.
“I’m going to vote for change, because I’m fed up,” said Sebastian Salgado, an auto mechanic. “In all my 75 years, I’ve never seen wages go up. We need a a change in our town, it’s just that the change Fox promised never arrived.” The Mexico State municipality of Ecatepec, whose 1.7 million people might make it Mexico’s second-largest city, has shifted back and forth between PAN and PRI mayors and once gave the PRD a sweep of its state legislative seats.
The issue of political coattails is important: The candidate who wins the presidential race is unlikely to have a majority in congress. The problem is particularly acute for Lopez Obrador, whose platform is ambitious, but whose party has the third-largest presence in congress.
The PRD could be aided by the fact that Lopez Obrador was highly popular as mayor of Mexico City, which borders Mexico State’s largest cities.
Even so, Jose Espina, the PAN’s secretary general, warned against seeing the state election as a forecast of the presidential race.
“The local vote results in the State of Mexico have never coincided with the predictions people tend to make, based on it, for the general elections,” Espina said.
About 9 million residents are eligible to vote for all 75 seats in the state congress and 125 mayorships.
The biggest prizes will be the mayorships of Ecatepec and Nezahualcoyotl, Naucalpan and Tlalnepantla – each of which has a population approaching or surpassing 1 million.
Vote tallies indicated the PAN was leading in Naucalpan and Tlalnepantla, while the PRD appeared to be holding on to Nezahualcoyotl and was making a strong bid to take Ecatepec.
The PRI currently holds 68 mayorships, including Ecatepec, while the PAN holds 24, including Naucalpan and Tlalnepantla. The PRD holds 24, the largest being Nezahualcoyotl.
The PRI holds about 24 seats in the current legislature, the PAN has 11, and the PRD 10; the rest are independents or members of smaller parties.
