Mexico’s most populous state chose President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party over the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Alejandra del Moral’s concession speech verified Delfina Gómez’s victory in Mexico after election officials’ Sunday night forecast. Votes were counted overnight.
The PRI, which controlled Mexico for 71 years until 2000 and the State of Mexico for even longer until Sunday, suffered a new low.
The National Electoral Institute reported that Gómez was expected to win 52.1% to 54.2% of the votes, compared to 43% to 45.2% for del Moral. The sampling forecast was at least 95% certain.
By midnight, the margin held.
“There is going to be a different governance,” Gómez told supporters in Toluca late Sunday night. The state’s first female governor-to-be pledged to support moms of missing people and femicide victims and fight corruption.
The PRI-dominated coalition retained the governorship of sparsely populated northern border state Coahuila, where Manolo Jiménez led by 35 points over the Morena rival with 80% of ballots counted.
Losing the State of Mexico was a political setback.
The contest’s possible impact on next year’s presidential race was also widely observed. With control of the State of Mexico, Morena will be the frontrunner in that national election even without a nominee.
Mexico City is surrounded by the State of Mexico, which has urban sprawl, rural ranches, shocking inequality, crime, and corruption. The Institutional Revolutionary Party’s heart for decades.
Political scientist Georgina de la Fuente of the Tecnologico de Monterrey university observed that Sunday’s results show that the PRI was crushed, but not as decisively as feared, Morena is not invincible, and parties will have to restructure their agreements. She said that Mexico’s electoral system, which López Obrador had heavily criticized, worked well.
Losing the State of Mexico might eliminate the PRI’s national political significance, a startling turnaround for a party that controlled Mexico for 70 years.
Mexico State had roughly half of eligible voters turnout.
Miguel Agustín López Moreno, a political scientist and social worker in Ecatepec, one of the state’s major towns, said, “It doesn’t seem like the elections have excited” people. He attributed the party’s triumph to its investment in the state and doubted citizens’ status would improve.
Before the results were announced Sunday, 21-year-old information systems student Adair Ortiz Herrera from Coyotepec, a remote town in the north, predicted “a new direction.” He stated his vote will terminate the present government’s hegemony.
