The state of Mexican politics after Sheinbaum's victory
In a Machiavellian move, the PAN might have destroyed their coalition partners, the PRI and PRD.
While Sunday’s presidential election results in Mexico were far from a surprise, there were a lot of changes that happened in other races which might change the face of Mexican politics for the foreseeable future. Of course, MORENA is in a dominate position, with overwhelming victories in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, as well as possible supermajorities.
If there’s anything to add to MORENA’s election night, it’s the fact that they were more dominate than expected. For example, in both Nuevo León and Yucatán, where MORENA didn’t pick up any senate seats in 2018, they are poised to get the majority of the vote in both states, thus winning four senate seats. In Yucatán, MORENA’s coalition in 2018 only won 21.7% of the vote, but are currently (as votes are still being counted) at 50.7%, a 14.5% swing in their direction. In Nuevo León, the race is still tight but MORENA has been in the lead ever since votes started being counted.
One thing is for certain in this election, which is that the Strength and Heart for Mexico coalition, which found fierce rivals the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) campaigning against a common enemy, embodied in the form of current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lost big time. Some of the polls had them running in the low 40%s in the presidential race. While this almost assures that they would have not won the presidency, the current figures showing the party at 28.2% is pretty pathetic. One of the reasons for this low number was that the Citizens’ Movement (CM) is catching 10.5% in the presidential race.
While a lot of the English-speaking media is caught up on the presidential race, it’s the Senate races that are the most interesting, and where the PAN might have pulled off one of the most Machiavellian moves of all time, by making their coalition partners obsolete, and making the PAN the clear opposition to MORENA for the next six years.
So why would this coalition be seen as Machiavellian?
To put that into perspective, this is the first time since the party was founded in 1929 that the PRI hasn’t had a presidential candidate on the ballot, with PAN’s Xóchitl Gálvez taking the top spot. One of the scenarios, that I posited in my recent podcast about the election, was that by voting for a PAN candidate on the presidential ballot, voters might simply continue to vote PAN on other ballots as well, even when they had an opportunity to vote for the PRI. And the place where this could be seen the clearest is in the Senate races.
In Mexican Senate races (which are held at the state level plus Mexico City), each coalition (or party if not in a coalition) puts forward two candidate names for the Senate. The coalition or party that receives the most votes in the state will have both of their candidates elected to the Senate. The second place coalition or party will have the first name on their list elected to the Senate. This gives these constituencies 3 senators each, equaling 96 senators.
The remaining 32 senators are elected by proportional representation. However, unlike the candidate elections, where candidates can be part of a multi-party coalition, the proportional representation is done by political party. Therefore, coalitions have no say in the Senate races. The same holds true for the Chamber of Deputies, but we are just going to talk about the Senate to keep it simple. Still, this is the opportunity for a voters to vote for the PRI on a party-only basis.
In previous elections, when the PRI and PAN were in separate coalitions, voting behavior was quite predictable. Basically, if someone voted PRI on the presidential ballot, the remaining ballots would probably (but not always) go PRI. Also, when someone voted for the Senate candidate’s party, that would automatically be one vote for that party in the proportional representation. The 2018 vote choice chart below conceptualizes how a voter might have voted.
This is where the 2024 election throws a monkey wrench into everything. Unlike the presidential ballot, where you can make multiple marks for multiple parties as long as they are in the same coalition and have the same presidential candidate, in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies ballot, you can only pick one political party. This is where voting patterns might be influenced by the top of the ticket. Essentially, if someone voted for Xóchitl Gálvez on the presidential ballot, knowing that she was a member of the PAN, this could condition a voter to vote PAN on other ballots as well since they don’t have a PRI or PRD candidate on the presidential ballot. With the results so far, it seems to be the case.
In states were the PRI performed relatively well in 2018, they have done poorly so far. Take the aforementioned Yucatán. In 2018, the PRI won 37.1% of the vote, with the PAN winning 28.5%. In 2024, the PAN are at 30.8%, while the PRI are 8.6%, which will have a major impact in their proportional representation vote.
As far as the nation as a whole, the PAN had 17.6% of the vote in Senate races, and the PRI had 15.9%. This year, the PAN are at 17.4% while the PRI have dropped to 11.0%. As for the third player, the PRD, 5.3% in 2018 to 2.3% in 2024.
If we break apart the coalition candidates into the individual political parties at the state candidate level, as of right now, the PAN are poised to win 19 senate seats, with the PRI winning only 10, and the PRD winning 3. While that is one seat gained for the PRI since 2018, it’s two gained for the PAN and three lost for the PRD.
One good example of this Machiavellian move by the PAN is in Sonora. In 2018, MORENA won the state, while the PRI was second, grabbing the one senate seat. In 2024, the top senate candidate for the PAN-PRI-PRD coalition was a member of the PAN. The second candidate was from the PRI. The coalition finished second in Sonora this year, meaning the PAN candidate was elected while the PRI wasn’t. Furthermore, at this moment, the PRI has 13.6% of the vote in Sonora, while the PAN only has 11.7%. This means that if the PRI wasn’t in a coalition, they would have kept the senate seat that they won in 2018. However, the coalition led to a PAN pickup at the expense of a PRI loss.
At the end of the day, the PAN’s true competitor isn’t MORENA. It’s always been the PRI. This election has given the PAN the opportunity to significantly decrease the power of the PRI. And when the PRI’s proportional representation vote down to 8.6% of the vote, they could lose a few more senators.
It’s too early to see if this was the goal of the PAN, and we’ll see if the coalition says together (which it hasn’t in the past). But still, the PRI and PAN are fighting over the scraps on the floor while MORENA are the true victors. More about the collapse about the Citizens’ Movement in another post.