Focus on the Candidates

Leo Zuckermann says that the primary reason for the PRI's defeats in Guerrero and Baja California Sur was a failure to pick electable candidates:

Guerrero was a state governed by the PRD where the PRI erred in their candidate. Instead of using their best chip, Ángel Aguirre, the priístas went with Manuel Añorve. Neither slow nor lazy, the PRD snapped up Aguirre, with whom they won. At the end of the contest, the PAN jumped on to the alliance with the left, adding a few votes for Aguirre. In this way, the PAN and the PRD once more applied the TUPRI formula, which is, Todos Unidos Contra el PRI [everyone united against the PRI].

In Baja California Sur, the PRD governed. The governor, Narciso Agúndez, made a show of sending Luis Armando Díaz as the candidate of his party to succeed him when his best card was Marcos Covarrubias. Neither slow nor lazy, the PAN snapped up Covarrubias and they won. There was no alliance here. The PAN simply took the governorship of the state from the PRD with a candidate that before the election was a perredista. There was no need to apply the TUPRI formula to defeat the PRI.

All of which leads us to insist that the local elections are local and must be viewed through local factors. You don't need to mix the local and the national.

It's a good point, though perhaps a bit of an oversimplification. In any event, he says that the drive to pick the most electable should lead Peña Nieto to throw his support behind Ecatepec Mayor Eruviel Ávila this summer.