Mexican general election, 2000

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1994 Flag of Mexico 2006
Mexican general election, 2000
July 2, 2000
Nominee Vicente Fox Francisco Labastida Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
Party PAN PRI PRD
Home state Guanajuato Sinaloa DF
States carried 19+DF 11 1
Popular vote 15,989,636 13,579,718 6,256,780
Percentage 42.52% 36.11% 16.64%
Mexican general election, 2000

Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Fox (19+DF), Green denotes those won by Labastida(11), Yellow denotes those one by Cárdenas (1).

Mexico held a general election on Sunday, July 2, 2000. At stake were the Presidency of the Republic, all 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies, and all 128 members of the Senate. Several local elections (state governorships, etc.) were also held on the same day.

[edit] Presidential election

The 2 July 2000 elections marked the first time since the 1910-17 Mexican Revolution that the opposition defeated the party in government. Vicente Fox won the election with 43% of the vote, followed by PRI candidate Francisco Labastida with 36%, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolution Party) (PRD) with 17%.

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.


[discuss] – [edit]
Summary of the 2 July 2000 Mexican presidential election results
Candidates - Parties Votes %
Vicente Fox Quesada - Alliance for Change (National Action Party / Ecologist Green Party of Mexico) 15,989,636 42.52
Francisco Labastida Ochoa - Institutional Revolutionary Party 13,579,718 36.11
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano - Alliance for Mexico (Party of the Democratic Revolution) 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
Total (turnout 64 %) 37,601,618 100.00
Source: Instituto Federal Electoral

[edit] Results by state

Based on the official results of the Federal Electoral Institute

State Fox Labastida Cárdenas Rincon 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

[edit] Congress of the Union

Party  Deputies   Senators 
PAN & PVEM
"Alliance for Change"
221 51
PRI 211 60
 PRD, PT, PAS, CD, PSN 
"Alliance for Mexico"
68 17
Totals 500 128

The Congress of the Union is composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Consecutive re-election is prohibited. Senators are elected to six-year terms, and deputies serve three-year terms. The Senate's 128 seats are filled by a mixture of direct-election (96) and proportional representation (32). In the lower chamber, 300 deputies are directly elected to represent single-member districts, and 200 are selected by a modified form of proportional representation from five electoral regions. The 200 proportional representation seats were created to help smaller parties gain access to the Chamber.

Even before the new electoral laws were passed, opposition parties were beginning to secure an increasing voice in Mexico's political system. A substantial number of candidates from opposition parties had won election to the Chamber of Deputies and Senate in previous elections. After the 2000 election, however, the Congress was more diverse than ever.

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