A Day Later

The newspapers continue to report that the PAN-PRD won the governor's seat in Puebla, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa, with the PRI taking the other nine states. For the PRI, this amounts to treading water (they held nine of the 12 states coming into Sunday), but because of the expectations of a clean sweep, this is a disappointing haul. Furthermore, many of the PRI's victories were less overwhelming than the polls had predicted. In only four states did the PRI pull more than 50 percent of the vote, which is just one more than the PAN-PRD's total.

Bajo Reserva says that the day's big winner was any and everyone in the PRD and PAN who bet on the alliances. Not only were the three victories the product of allied candidates, but they likely could have taken Tlaxcala and Zacatecas had a single candidate from the PAN and PRD been agreed to months ago. One big loser was AMLO, who spent a lot of effort slamming the alliances. (More on this and other electoral topics from David Agren here.) At the same time, while the alliances have turned out to be a mildly successful electoral gambit (and we shouldn't get carried away there, either; at the end of the day, the second and third political forces in the nation were together far from equal to the first. If you remove yourself from expectations, yesterday was also a sharp reminder of the PRI's nationwide superiority), it remains to be see how they affect governance in the states where they came out on top.