Mexicans went out to the polls and sent 500 new representatives to the lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, 903 municipal presidencies (mayors) and 639 local congressmen in several states, as well as nine governors, a midterm election between the previous presidential one in 2012 and the next one in 2018.
But the real story was focused on a big first for Mexico: 125 independent candidates, campaigning outside the traditional party system. Seventy one were mayoral candidates, 29 for state level congressional post, 22 for federal deputies and three for governor.
So, how did other independents fare yesterday?
No one expected independent candidates tu suddenly win every election, but they did surprisingly well in many instances and in the northern state of Nuevo León, an independent won the top prize, as former PRI member turned independent, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, know as El Bronco ended up with 48.86% of the votes, above Ivonne Álvarez from the PRI (23.55%) and well above the PAN candidate Felipe de Jesús Cantú (22.54%), according to the State's election authority's preliminary election results system, SIPRE.
His victory instantly grabbed international headlines from The Guardian to The New York Times, not just because of his flamboyant cowboy personality, but also about how this forever changes the Mexican political landscape. Not yet perhaps, but it will probably give Mexicans hope that there is a political and institutional way out of Mexico's current dreary climate of stagnant economic growth, corruption and violence that has plagued the country for more than a decade now.
Besides "El Bronco", independents also won at least one federal congressional race, two mayor's offices and several local races.
Manuel Clouthier, son of a founder of the National Action Party and former member of it, ran and won as an independent in his native Sinaloa.
José Alberto Méndez Pérez, in Comonfort, Guanajuato, and Alfonso Martínez, in Morelia, Michoacán, are on track to be mayors-elect of their cities as independents and free of any political parties.
Some even smaller independents with little-to-no political experience within the party system managed enough votes to pull out a win in large urban areas that are heavily dominated by the big parties. As did 25 year-old Pedro Kumamoto, who won as a local congressman in Jalisco representing parts of the Greater Guadalajara Area. One of Mexico's few, true, grassroots campaigns that took off because of voter discontent with the main parties, he says he spent less than $1,200 dollars in his campaign and went from "being 20 six months ago to thousands now" thanks to the internet and social media.
Former soccer star, Cuauhtémoc Blanco, won the mayorship of Cuernavaca, although most considered him a type of independent candidate because the party he represented, the local Social Democratic Party, didn't figure much in his campaign.
Voter participation was actually up since the last midterm elections in 2009, from 44% six years ago to 47% this year, showing increased interest in some wacky but new faces in the elections and the prospect of experimenting with the newly legal figure of an independent candidate.
Bloomberg Business quotes Gabriel Casillas, the chief economist at Grupo Financiero Banorte SAB, Mexico's largest publicly-traded bank, as saying that the election "…clearly shows the people's dissatisfaction with the behavior of political parties. Political parties will have to rethink their strategies. We could see a strong individual, independent candidate run for president in 2018."
Green Party backlash puts governing majority in danger
Since even before the official election season began, the Mexico's Green Party (PVEM in Spanish) and "Green" in name only, has taken a beating in the public eye after what most citizens, opposition parties and electoral authorities agree was a strategy to use the Green Party as a distraction and syphon away voter anger from the ruling PRI. The results were mixed.
Nationally, the Greens survive thanks to their alliance with the PRI, as most of their new deputies were elected thanks to formal coalitions during the election, not on their own (except in the southern state of Chiapas, were the Greens have effectively replaced the PRI as the dominating party).
But locally, as in Baja California, the Greens took a beating in the polls, very likely as punishment for their excesses during the campaign (and before it). They placed seventh in Baja, even behind newcomers such as Morena, that managed to even rival the PRI in some districts for 2nd and 3rd place.
The state also punished the PRI for being responsible for a hike in the VAT (Value Added Tax) along the border two years ago that experts say did negatively affect the purchasing power of millions of citizens, and it seems PRI candidates suffered greatly for it yesterday, with the PAN winning every congressional district in Baja for the first time in years.
Currently, the PRI-PVEM and Panal (a smaller, teacher unions-backed party) alliance in Congress gives Peña Nieto a governing majority of 251 votes to work with in the Lower House, the Chamber of Deputies.
But the majority is now in danger. Worst case scenario for the coalition puts it at just 4 votes shy, with 246; Nevertheless, a best case scenario puts them on top with 236, depending on the final results. Even if the majority fails, most experts don't believe the opposition can muster enough unity to make a difference.
Left wins big despite being fractured
The Morena party (Movement of National Regeneration), born out of former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador's political movement in 2012, for its part, beat out the traditional third option and left-wing party, the PRD, in the state and nationally, setting up a battle for the left in the 2018. The PRD had its worst showing in 12 years, even in its traditional stronghold of Mexico City, were it lost 5 boroughs to Morena and others to the PAN and PRI.
But far from being a shift away from the left, Mexicans seemed to have preferred newcomers to the old parties in every political spectrum, and turned to independent or smaller progressive party candidate. Morena gained 37 seats in the Chamber of Deputies as did Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), which surged in the state of Jalisco and will end up anywhere from 24 to 29 seats in the Federal Congress.
MC also won the mayoral race in Guadalajara, with Enrique Alfaro getting 51% of the vote, a huge showing in politically fractured Mexico, were even the main parties have trouble getting a clear majority.
Overall, Mexicans woke up with a sense that, despite the violence and corruption, elections might still matter and make a difference heading towards electing a new president in 2018.
Another big first for this elections by the way: All these new members of Congress will be the first to be able to run for reelection come the next federal election in 2018, in accordance to the political reform of 2013. They'll be able to to run four times for a total of 12 years in office.
Information from CNN México, INE.
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