As you were

As you were

by The Economist online | MEXICO CITY

MEXICO’S bloody state elections ended last night in low turnouts and a politically inconclusive outcome. The opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won nine of the 12 governorships up for grabs, while the ruling National Action Party (PAN) took just three. However, the PRI already held the posts in nine of those states, and was expected to register a clean sweep. Instead, it showed no net gain, and in fact traded control of three big states for three small ones. The results may blunt the PRI’s momentum somewhat—the party won control of the lower house of Congress in last year’s midterm elections—but are unlikely to fundamentally alter the dynamics of the 2012 presidential race.

The run-up to the elections, for 1,502 positions in 14 of Mexico’s 31 states, was marred by drug-related violence. On June 28th, the leading candidate for governor in the northern border state of Tamaulipas was murdered, while a mayoral candidate in the same state was killed a few weeks earlier. Intimidated by this violence, barely 20% 39% of Tamaulipas voters cast their ballots on Sunday—and fully 40% of election officials in the state reportedly stayed home.

Such a climate of fear did not bode well for the party of Felipe Calderón, the embattled president, since his fight against Mexico’s drug gangs has grown even more bloody this year and shows no signs of abating. Yet the PRI proved unable to capitalise on weariness with the conflict. It lost control of three historic bastions of power, Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa, to alliances led by the PAN. Those states represent 11% of Mexico’s population and 7.1% of its GDP, whereas the three states gained by the PRI represent 3% of the population and 2.7% of GDP, according to Bloomberg.

Licking its wounds, the PRI pointed out that it still controls 19 of Mexico’s 31 state governorships. It remains the party most likely to seize the presidency in 2012. And it is dangerous to read too much into lightly attended polls that were heavily based on local issues. “It’s a great media lie that these elections predict what will happen in 2012,” says Agustín Llamas Mendoza, a professor of political science at the IPADE Business School in Mexico City. He notes that in 1999 the PRI swept to victory in local elections in Mexico state, the country’s most populous state and one often treated as a political barometer. It lost the presidency the following year.

Yet yesterday’s vote could still influence the national political scene in two ways. Firstly, governors of Mexican states openly direct public spending for partisan advantage. Though yesterday’s polls may not say much about the public’s voting intentions come 2012, they leave the PRI with weaker power bases than they had hoped, which may hinder the party’s political machine in the presidential campaign.

Secondly, the results seem to show that the PAN’s strategy of forming alliances with unlikely political bedfellows has paid off, and may be used again. In Oaxaca, a PRI stronghold since time immemorial, the conservative PAN managed to win thanks to a strange marriage to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), a left-wing party with whom the PAN had an almighty falling-out in 2006, after Mr Calderón beat their candidate to the presidency by a whisker. The PAN-PRD alliance makes little sense ideologically, but it appears that in electoral terms it has done the trick. It may now be that the two parties try the same tactic in future contests, most notably in Mexico state, which will have a gubernatorial contest next year. Its current governor, Enrique Peña Nieto, is viewed as the PRI’s most likely presidential candidate come 2012. Should his nominated successor fall to a PAN-PRD alliance, the PRI’s seemingly inevitable march back the presidency would begin to look a lot less certain.