North American press on AMLO

I have done a more thorough search of the North American press and was hearted to find some insightful coverage.

There is the usual depth at specialized sites like Carlos Luken at MexData

http://www.mexidata.info/id989.html


and of course Bloomberg tracks the bond, stock and currency markets
(the more that AMLO acts up, the more the BOLSA and peso go down)

http://digbig.com/4mede


I noticed three good articles this week, in

The Washington Post

http://digbig.com/4medh


The L.A. Times

http://digbig.com/4medg


and Miami Herald

The last is a special treat: Enrique Krauze

http://digbig.com/4medf

sitting tight until Sept 6

The election will become official in September when (if) the Tribunal certifies it. In the meantime, I am amazed by a couple of phenomena.

1. AMLO is fomenting demonstrations. He will have his day in court, so why does he need to have these demonstrations? Could it be that he is trying to build momentum for the court's rejection of his case?

2. I am amazed at how the mainstream foreign press is basically ignoring the situation in Mexico, but the leftist media has seized upon it. The two comments to my last blog entry echo much of that English-language rhetoric. Interesting, the commentors have cast this in a religious light (which I have not emphasized in my previous postings).

Here is the view of one of the most politically aware religious sites in Mexico, Yo Influyo.


http://www.yoinfluyo.com.mx/artman/publish/article_6624.php

I must concur with that analysis, and trust that the tribunal will vindicate IFE.

more weight for vote legitimacy

Over the last few days, the international press has weighed in on the Mexican election. From the U.S., Spain, England, and France, the election and its tabulation are seen as legitimate. World leaders from Bush (U.S.) to Martin (Canada) to Zapatero (Spain) have officially congratulated Calderon on his victory.

In today´s Rumbo de Mexico, the foremost of Mexico´s liberal intellectuals, Carlos Fuentes said ¨The presidential election was transparent¨and he urged his fellow citizens to accept the rule of constitutional law.

conspiracy theory

I stumbled across another blog,

http://machete2006.wordpress.com/

This is an interesting conspiracy theory, with much more speculative theory than hard evidence of conspiracy. It sounds similar to that voiced by some of AMLOs followers: the PAN and IFE ¨manipulated¨ the count to give Calderon a victory.

At the micro level, I observed the voting and counting of the votes in three precincts, and detected no fraud.

At the macro level, I notice a great consistency between the exit polls of many different organizations, the PREP, and the current counts: all show a slight lead for Calderon. As a social scientist specializing in questionnaires ( http://heuristicbooks.com ) I think that attributing all of these consistencies between these separate polls and the IFE totals is more than a reasonable stretch.

Let´s admit that Calderon got more votes on Sunday.

If you want to say that the balloting was not valid because slick media duped the average voter into being afraid to vote for his own best interests (e.g., AMLO), that is another story, but don´t try to invent vote totals that don´t exist.

return to normalcy, but wait, not yet

On Tuesday I went into DF to attend a conference at UNAM. The stall vendors in the markets were watching their portable TVs: soccer and soap operas. Was there an election last Sunday?
At the university I walked around the faculties of humanities, law, political science, and history. Students were reading their textbooks, flirting, and practicing some moves with soccer balls. I found this ANTI-AMLO bumper sticker in the parking lot of the students.

On Wednesday I was at a cibercafe across from another university UAEM in Toluca. The students flirted and downloaded Reggaeton videos. In the morning, women walked their uniformed children to their last week of school before vacation.

The Bolsa (Mexican stock market) is up to 20.329 on Tuesday, from 19.147 just before the election (a gain of 6.2% in two days). The Tuesday interbank rate for the peso/dollar exchange shows a stronger peso, 11.08 to the dollar, from 11.30 just before the election. The Wall Street Journal has dubbed this good news "the Calderon effect" based upon the likelihood of his victory and the improbability of any serious challenge to the results. But Wednesday, when the results became more confused, the stock market and peso fell again. Not quite normalcy, yet.

breadth & depth of PRI defeat

On Monday I looked at three Toluca precincts to illustrate how badly the PRI fared in Sunday's election. A more comprehensive geographical and historical analysis reveals that point with even greater clarity.

Just nine years ago, the PRI held not only the presidency of the Republic, but 238 congressional seats, and in the session elected Sunday, it will be down to 113. Even in the last Congress, the PRI had more seats than any other party, but now it will be in third place.

If we look at those few governorships up for grabs, the PRI lost them all: Jalisco (Guadalajara), Guanajuato, Morelos (Cuernavaca), and DF (Mexico City).

But it is in the Presidential race that the PRI loss is most evident. Madrazo lost in every single state, even in those 17 that currently have a PRI governor. Indeed, in the majority of states, Madrazo was behind both AMLO and Calderon. Even in his home state of Tabasco, where he had served as its governor, he lost to AMLO 56.11% to 37.73%. Alas, that was his best showing anywhere.

Mexico State is most illustrative here. Just last year, the PRI candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, garnered a clear majority of the votes, but Madrazo came in last place with less than a fifth.
To his credit, Madrazo was not a bad looser. He called the election procedures perfectly legal and he did not attempt to deflect the blame for his defeat on anyone else.

strategy in multi-party elections

Anytime there are more than two candidates, the question arises if voting for anyone other than the top two constitutes a wasted vote. In this year's Mexican presidential election, the answer was "it depends." It depends primarily on the voter's individual agenda, motive, and purpose.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the PRD: People who voted for the poll leader were the least complicated in their motives. They resonated to his image and bought his promises. I have not heard anyone say that a vote for AMLO was just a way of defeating Calderon, Fox, or the PAN.

Felipe Calderon of the PAN: People who supported this relatively bland conservative did so because they liked his experience, his (relative) honesty, or his stand on the issues (pro-life, free market, tough on crime). Alternatively, I have spoken with several people who didn't particularly like Calderon (or the PAN in general) who voted for him simply because he was the one candidate with the best chance of denying the victory to AMLO. Some of Calderon's last ads even emphasized this strategy.

Roberto Madrazo of the PRI: I have yet to meet anyone outside of the PRI who thinks that Madrazo was the most likeable or the most honest or had the best stand on the issues. Just as there are some people in Eastern Europe who wax nostalgic about the stability of Communism, so there are some people in Mexico who long for the PRI bureaucracy and didn't want to see Madrazo lose by double digits (but he did). If someone's goal was to stop AMLO (or Calderon for that matter), voting for Madrazo would not be as effective as voting for a stronger opponent.
Patricia Mercado of the Alternative Party: She was the most articulate and left-leaning of the field, yet with no chance of a double digit percentage. Most of her supporters either don't trust AMLO to fulfill his promises or just wanted to keep up the pressure on issues such as reproductive rights. (She and Calderon are the only candidates to take firm, but opposite stands on abortion.) Most her supporters were convinced that AMLO would win, but hoped that a good showing for Mercado would pressure AMLO to fulfill promises and pressure the PRD to nominate future progressive candidates at every level.

Roberto Campa of the New Alliance: His campaign started out as an anti-Madrazo, PRIista revolt. His party obtained about 5% for the Senate and Deputies, but he himself garnered about 1% of the vote, despite being quite likeable and articulate. My inference is that his followers were more interested in defeating AMLO than in giving more votes to Campa's losing cause. Even if all of Campa's votes had been added to Madrazo's total, the PRI still would have landed in third place.

This election should have been a referendum on Fox, and Calderon (or any other PANista) should have won easily. It became a referendum on AMLO with both Calderon and Mercado supporters saying "no" but for different reasons. Madrazo and Campa lost their relevance to this discussion.

more praise for IFE

The integrity of Sunday's electoral process has been accepted by two otherparties, Roberto Madrazo of the PRI and Roberto Campa of the New Alliance. More importantly, APCE (Asemblea Parlamentaria del Consejo de Europa), a group of observers from the EU has given its highest stamp of approval on the Mexican elections. "The Mexican elections were conducted at an unprecidented level of transparency and reliability rarely seen in the rest of the world."

Meanwhile, Jose Luis Barraza, president of CCE (Consejo Coordinador Empresarial) has stated "We should all respect the finalized results coming out of IFE, and accept them unconditionally."
This chorus was joined by Toluca Bishop Javier Chavolla who warned that any candidate who disqualifies such election results has only disqualified himself.

voto nulo 2006 = hanging chad 2000

AMLO is grasping at straws, akin to the U.S. Democrats in 2000. Remember how they figured that Florida was the key in the electoral count and thought that if the vote totals could be recalculated and the questionable ballots counted, then they would win (under assumption that people not competent enough to punch their ballots correctly would be disproportionately representative of Gore supporters). Well, Lopez Obrador seems to be making similar assumptions.

In Mexico, what would be akin to hanging chads would be paper ballots known as these are known as "votos nulos." Each precinct is required to report these nullified votes along with the totals for each candidate. Let me describe the process by which a vote becomes nullified. After the polls close, and the precinct workers move to the counting stage, ballots are put into piles: this one for the PRI, that one for the PAN, the other for the PRD, etc. Observers from the three major parties watch to make sure that each ballot gets into the correct pile, then they count each pile again. The "votos nulos" form their own pile, and the observers must agree that is the best classification for each of those votes. Their total is usually less than one percent of all votes cast in the precinct. The usual reason for declaring a vote null is that the voter had marked more than one name.

On Sunday at the three precincts voting at my home, I observed no arguments over the dozen or so votes declared null.

Calm persists

I went in to the city yesterday to attend a conference at UNAM. People in the market stalls are back to watching soccer and novelas and Reggaeton videos. Subway car hawkers are back to touting a promotional offer for miracle cream (smells like Vicks Vapo Rub but does so much more at only twice the price). Was there an election on Sunday?

Students at the faculties of humanities, history, law, and political science are waiting for the internal bus to take them to the metro, reading, flirting, practicing soccer ball control. Was there an election on Sunday?

Today I am at the cibercafe across from UAEM in Toluca. Students are playing basketball, flirting, downloading songs. Was there an election on Sunday?

The morning streets have women walking their uniformed children to school (the last week before many are off on summer vacation) and tanker trucks delivering natural gas. Was there an election on Sunday?

link to ongoing count

The IFE link given out on TV last night just points to various exit polls.

Here is the direct link to ongoing tabulations.

http://elecciones.reforma.com/prep2006/default.htm

With 98.1% of the casillas tabulated, and Calderon holding a 1% lead at 15:30 hrs Monday it would appear to be an insurmountable lead, but we must remember that these vote totals are precincts, not ballots, so AMLO has a chance to close the gap, particularly if those casillas yet to report are from rural or indigineous areas.

A quote oft attributed to Yogi Berra applies to baseball as well as elections:

¨It´s not over until it´s over.¨

an analysis of voting patterns: Madrazo was a drag

Looking at the results (pictured below) for three precincts in Toluca, one interesing pattern is clear. Just one year ago, in the July 2005 gubernatorial election in EdoMex, the PRI candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, received a clear majority of the vote. Now, less than a quarter of the vote went for PRI senate and deputy candidates. From these data we should infer that last year´s PRI party loyalty among the electoral was broad, but shallow, and certainly not enduring.

Looking deeper at the data, notice that in the three precincts, Madrazo´s presidential totals were consistently less than those for the PRI at the Senate and Deputy levels. Some voters were saying yes to the PRI in the national Congress, but no to Madrazo as president. My informal discussions revealed two possible motives at work here.

1. some voters still regarded themselves as PRIistas, but were disappointed that Montiel was not the nominee, and this translated into anger at Madrazo.

2. some voters thought it was more important to stop AMLO than to give Madrazo a few more votes in an obviously losing bid.

AMLO saying the right things

Lat night at 11:00 PM, the President of IFE, Luis Carlos Ugalde, did the most honest and courageous thing he could: he announced that quick ballot counts could not be relied upon in this election to project the winner, and that the Republic would have to wait for the complete count of the ballots.

Immediately, the TV covereage switched to the Zocalo and AMLO spoke. Although he claimed that he was ahead in (some unofficial, private) vote count by 15,000, he reaffirmed that he has no hatred for his opponents and that he will abide by the laws of the country, and if he is defeated by a single vote, he will accept that.

On June 29 he explained his economic policies to El Financiero, ¨In a few words, there will be a technical management, no economic ideology. Our formula for financing development does not require contracting debt or adding taxes¨(my translation).

The bond market fell last week in anticipation of an AMLO victory (or disruption in the wake of an AMLO defeat). This morning the BOLSA rallied because Calderon has a slight lead, and AMLO seems willing to accept defeat if the numbers go against him, or at least not be an enemy of international finance if he does in fact pull out a victory.

and the big loser is: Marcos

Even though the votes have not yet been completely counted, it is obvious that one politician is the big loser in Sunday's election: that masqued marvel of the media "Subcomandante Marcos." Throughout the campaign, he traveled around with his latest moniker "Delegado Zero" and rushed to every possible spark of violence (e.g., Atenco) as if it could reignite his own fame. He took every opportunity to insult the unmasked candidates. Just last week he called for road blocks to "dislocate" the elections. His calls went unheaded, and his predictions of widespread fraud seem equally false. At over 130,000 polling places in the Republic, Mexican voters announced that masqued theatricality belongs in the wrestling ring, not in a transparent government. Millions of Mexicans have raised their inked thumbs to chant: IFE SI, MARCOS NO.

and the big winner is: IFE !!

Election Day was transparent and civil, and perhaps joyous.

Before the days of hanging chads and fears that Diebold would steal votes electronically, there were the old paper ballots. I remember elections from the years 1956-1964 when my parents home in northern California was used as a precinct polling place. My parents were Republicans and our neighbors were Democrats, but we were all proud to come together and do our civic duties to make sure that votes were cast in an honest way.

Today, Sunday July 2, in Toluca is a deja vu. This time it is my house in Toluca being used as one of the nation´s 130,000 polling places. Two months ago, the Instituto Federal Electoral, IFE, called for volunteer locations, then visited our home and found it acceptable. Ten days ago they reconfirmed that everything was set and put out the sign on the house notifying the neighbors. They also put polling site information on the IFE website http://www.ubicatucasilla.org.mx ("find your polling place") and have a toll free number giving that information 01-800-433-2000. Both the website and phone number appeared in most newspapers.

Friday a team of about four arrived to unload some of the equipment that would be needed on election day. The polls were to open to the public at 8:00 AM, and at 6:55 the IFE official, an energetic and efficient man named Mr. Vilchis, assigned to this precinct arrived. I got out to tie up the dogs and back out the vehicles so that IFE could do the final set up with the ballots and boxes and purple ink markers. A half hour later, the line commenced, and although it never got a block long, it remained at least ten persons deep for hours.

What has impressed me most was the conduct of the election team and the voters. The team included official observers from each political party (properly identified by their buttons). The words which describe the people today are calm, upbeat, proud. Most brought their children to show them what democracy is like (and perhaps to talk about the bad old days of one party rule and phony elections). Many inexplicably drove to the polls in their cars (perhaps to show how everyone else how they are keeping up with the Garcias).

Several television stations had extensive election coverage of polling around the country. The reports show tranquility, a large turnout, and no major irregularities. In some places, people waited for over four hours in line to vote. Voting was going smoothly even in the "hot spots" of Oaxaca (a teacher's strike), Coahuila (disputes with miners over safety), and Atenco (where only a peaceful protest was staged).

There were belated photo-ops and sound bite moments for the candidates voting with their spouses in their home districts. As she had been throughout the campaign, Patricia Mercado was perhaps the most clear and eloquent when she said to reporters: "I am not here to proselytize, just to affirm my faith in the process." When asked if it was a scary day for her, she said that it would be better to describe the day as one that had been long hoped for. When asked what her plans were for the future, she pointed out: "That is for the voters to decide." I was also pleased to see one of Mexico's greatest living intellectual treasures, Carlos Fuentes, interviewed as he came out from voting. "Today the candidates don't count, it is we voters who count."

IFE is justifiably proud of its accomplishments, and the Mexican people should be proud of IFE. Fledgeling democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq have much to learn from Mexico (and dare I say, so does the U.S. electoral process).

an election eve prediction

I called the race for Calderon after the first debate, and I am sticking with that prediction. More recent polls have been inconclusive or shown AMLO with a slight lead. However, my favorite pollster, Roy Campo of Mitofsky suggests that the results of the elections might still hold a big surprise.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/140035.html

One of his main points is that up to a tenth of the voters may make a last minute decision whether to vote or for whom to vote.

I foresee a large turnout and a narrow Calderon victory. Here are the dynamics

1. many undecideds and minor party supporters will switch to Calderon

2. many religiously oriented voters, though poor and in sync with AMLOs economic plans, will switch to Calderon.

Tomorrow, I shall spend the entire day observing a casilla (voting precinct) from set up to take down, and report on the process.

I think that there will be no definitive results until Tuesday at least.