Mexican general election, 2000

Mexican general election, 2000

July 2, 2000

Nominee Vicente Fox Francisco Labastida Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Party PAN PRI PRD Home state Guanajuato Sinaloa Mexico City Popular vote 15,989,636 13,579,718 6,256,780 Percentage 42.52% 36.11% 16.64%

States won by the presidential candidates (blue for Fox, green for Labastida and yellow for Cárdenas)

President before election Ernesto Zedillo PRI Elected President Vicente Fox PAN

A general election was held in Mexico on Sunday, July 2, 2000. Voters went to the polls to elect, on the federal level:

• A new President of the Republic to serve a six-year term, replacing then Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (ineligible for re-election under the 1917 Constitution).
• 500 members (300 by the first-past-the-post system and 200 by proportional representation) to serve for a three-year term in the Chamber of Deputies.
• 128 members (three per state by first-past-the-post and 32 by proportional representation from national party lists) to serve six-year terms in the Senate. In each state, two first-past-the-post seats are allocated to the party with the largest share of the vote, and the remaining seat is given to the first runner-up.

Several local ballots were also held on the same day, most notably:

• The General elections were held in Mexico on 6 July 2000.^[1] The presidential elections were won by Vicente Fox of the Alliance for Change, who received 43.4% of the vote,^[2] the first time the opposition had won an election since the Mexican Revolution. In the Congressional elections the Alliance for Change emerged as the largest faction in the Chamber of Deputies with 224 of the 500 seats, whilst the Institutional Revolutionary Party remained the largest faction in the Senate with 60 of the 128 seats in the Senate.^[3] Voter turnout was between 63 and 64% in the elections.^[4]

This a historically significant election that made Fox the first president elected from an opposition party since Francisco I. Madero in 1910 and the first one in 71 years to defeat, with 42 percent of the vote, the then-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Presidential election

Despite some isolated incidents of irregularities and problems, such as one in the southern state of Campeche which involved the European Union electoral observer Rocco Buttiglione and which could have created problems for President Ernesto Zedillo had the PRI candidate won, there was little evidence that those incidents were centrally coordinated (as opposed to led by local PRI officials) and critics concluded that the irregularities that occurred did not alter the outcome of the presidential vote, which was more definitive than expected. Civic organizations fielded more than 80,000 trained electoral observers, foreign observers were invited to witness the process, and numerous "quick count" operations and exit polls (not all of them independent) validated the official vote tabulation. The largest exit poll was organized by the U.S. firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, financed by a hitherto obscure outfit in Dallas called Democracy Watch (later it emerged that Democracy Watch was essentially set up by Fox campaign insiders to help prevent an expected election fraud).

Numerous electoral reforms implemented since 1989 aided in the opening of the Mexican political system, and since then opposition parties made historic gains in elections at all levels. The chief electoral concerns shifted from outright fraud to campaign fairness issues and, between 1995 and 1996, the political parties negotiated constitutional amendments to address these issues. The legislation implemented included major points of consensus that had been worked out with the opposition parties. Under the new laws, public financing predominated over private contributions to political parties, procedures for auditing parties were tightened, and the authority and independence of the electoral institutions were strengthened. The court system was also given greatly expanded authority to hear civil rights cases on electoral matters brought by individuals or groups. In short, the extensive reform efforts of the 1990s "leveled the playing field" for the parties.

Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Vicente Fox Quesada	Alliance for Change	15,989,636	42.52
Francisco Labastida Ochoa	Institutional Revolutionary Party	13,579,718	36.11
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano	Alliance for Mexico	6,256,780	16.64
Gilberto Rincón Gallardo	Social Democracy	592,381	1.58
Manuel Camacho Solís	Party of the Democratic Center	206,589	0.55
Porfirio Muñoz Ledo	Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution	156,896	0.42
Other candidates		30,461	0.1
Invalid/blank votes		788,157	–
Total		37,601,618	100
Source: Nohlen

Results by state

Based on the official results of the Federal Electoral Institute

State	Fox	Labastida	Cárdenas	Rincón	Camacho	Muñoz	Write-in	None
Aguascalientes	202,335	127,134	26,264	9,467	2,202	1,389	83	6,291
Baja California	429,194	319,477	77,340	14,562	3,470	3,080	507	14,965
Baja California Sur	60,834	56,230	45,229	2,107	460	364	17	2,804
Campeche	104,498	106,347	35,090	2,485	1,406	1,247	559	9,309
Chiapas	288,204	469,392	272,182	5,340	4,659	4,063	1,056	44,551
Chihuahua	549,177	460,931	76,810	11,569	4,487	3,166	609	21,350
Coahuila	398,800	311,480	77,393	10,392	2,111	1,880	1,454	12,464
Colima	106,445	81,099	23,313	3,159	1,028	542	39	4,377
Distrito Federal	1,928,035	1,060,227	1,146,131	149,312	36,383	18,843	2,009	75,669
Durango	211,361	222,892	50,592	6,144	1,579	1,469	859	9,294
Guanajuato	1,128,780	517,815	121,489	18,248	10,800	8,473	2,873	49,039
Guerrero	174,962	402,091	332,091	6,179	2,913	3,003	954	20,180
Hidalgo	282,864	355,565	136,861	12,319	5,034	4,078	758	19,997
Jalisco	1,392,535	941,962	163,269	45,494	17,567	11,110	3,287	48,736
México	2,239,750	1,637,714	961,876	121,137	40,733	27,203	3,416	92,743
Michoacán	419,188	441,871	543,804	13,058	7,444	6,404	2,060	30,448
Morelos	290,639	193,861	124,368	12,539	2,916	3,010	136	12,296
Nayarit	107,417	173,479	63,121	3,092	1,175	1,024	351	7,043
Nuevo León	760,093	615,907	96,637	20,448	7,478	2,658	1,519	27,201
Oaxaca	301,195	486,496	282,587	11,074	8,372	7,305	1,851	39,616
Puebla	732,435	698,974	208,688	20,170	8,609	7,849	1,142	44,305
Querétaro	290,977	192,622	39,629	10,585	3,768	8,670	170	13,849
Quintana Roo	132,383	94,202	50,487	2,399	916	729	70	5,216
San Luis Potosí	393,997	324,234	72,599	11,073	3,306	2,287	407	22,673
Sinaloa	230,777	621,329	90,488	7,205	2,189	1,675	1,290	15,920
Sonora	447,496	292,267	114,580	6,426	1,672	1,325	94	13,269
Tabasco	174,840	269,519	213,983	5,817	2,599	1,732	655	14,036
Tamaulipas	521,486	445,737	91,426	9,387	3,210	6,932	1,157	19,659
Tlaxcala	123,880	127,163	82,073	5,185	2,508	1,450	53	6,639
Veracruz	1,066,719	1,008,933	491,791	25,474	11,343	10,956	985	58,630
Yucatán	328,503	321,392	27,214	4,258	1,344	987	602	13,127
Zacatecas	169,837	197,336	117,375	6,277	2,908	1,993	439	12,461
Total	15,989,636	13,579,718	6,256,780	592,381	206,589	156,896	31,461	788,157

Congress of the Union

Senate

Party	Constituency		PR		Seats	+/-
	Votes	%	Votes	%
Alliance for Change	14,208,973	38.1	14,339,963	38.2	60	-17
Institutional Revolutionary Party	13,699,799	36.7	13,755,787	36.7	51	+17
Alliance for Mexico	7,027,944	18.9	7,027,994	18.8	16	-1
Social Democracy	669,725	1.8	676,388	1.8	0	New
Democratic Central Party	521,178	1.4	523,569	1.4	1	New
Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution	275,051	0.7	276,109	0.7	0	New
Non-registered candidates	31,079	0.1	30,892	0.1	0	–
Invalid/blank votes	852,106	–	854,459	–	–	–
Total	37,285,855	100	37,534,641	100	128	0
Source: Nohlen

Chamber of Deputies

Party	Constituency		PR		Seats	+/-
	Votes	%	Votes	%
Alliance for Change	14,212,476	38.2	14,323,649	38.2	224	+95
Institutional Revolutionary Party	13,720,453	36.9	13,800,306	36.9	207	-31
Alliance for Mexico	6,948,204	18.7	6,990,143	18.7	67	-67
Social Democracy	698,683	1.9	703,532	1.9	0	New
Democratic Central Party	428,577	1.2	430,812	1.2	0	New
Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution	272,425	0.7	273,615	0.7	0	New
Other parties	30,380	0.1	30,452	0.1	0	–
Independents	-	-	-	-	2	New
Invalid/blank votes	863,262	–	868,516	–	–	–
Total	37,174,460	100	37,421,025	100	500	0
Source: Nohlen

References

1. Nohlen, D (2005) Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I, p453 ISBN 978-0-19-928357-6
2. Nohlen, p475
3. Nohlen, p470
4. Nohlen, p455