One month after the elections are held in the territorial entities of Coahuila and the State of Mexico, the expected results endanger the historic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and exhibit trends towards the 2024 presidential elections.
Although in northern Coahuila, the coalition between the PRI, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has a good chance of winning, its foreseeable defeat in the central State of Mexico, the most populous in the country , it can turn the party that ruled the country for more than 70 years into a political corpse.
According to experts consulted by EFE, defeat in a square that has belonged to it for more than a century would be a severe blow to a party that has lost its national presence in recent years.
“The State of Mexico would mean a big loss for the PRI, due to the coverage in the state with the largest census in the country, the strength of political groups like the one in Atlacomulco, and the perspective at the national level,” said Arturo Sánchez, a professor of Public Transformation at Tec de Monterrey and former counselor of the National Electoral Institute (INE).
Although they are only two statesthe election on June 4 is important because they are the only entities that the PRI has never lost.
While the coalition of parties that support President Andrés Manuel López Obrador went from governing almost none to a total of 22 so far in his six-year term, which began in 2018.
For Carlos Castañón, a political scientist at the Universidad Iberoamericana de Torreón (Coahuila), the progressive decline of the ex-hegemonic party is evident in an image: “Now the entire PRI fits in a truck, it went from being the great ruling party to a minority in danger of extinction”.
presidential thermometer
The influence in the 2024 presidential elections is another of the issues that permeate these two state elections.
Despite the foreseeable victory of the PRI in Coahuila, the low population density of the state, of 3 million inhabitants, will mean that it will not have any repercussions in national terms, Castañón considered.
In the State of Mexico, the race is much tighter and the PRI, framed in the same coalition as in Coahuila, still has a chance of preserving office.
With its nearly 12 million votersSánchez stressed, the winning coalition will be a thermometer of what can happen in the general elections.
Coahuila, the last bastion of the PRI
The candidate of the PRI-PAN-PRD alliance, Manolo Jimenezcounts a month from the polls with a solvent advantage over a left that has presented itself divided.
Jiménez would add, according to the average polls from Polls.mx, 48% of the votes, more than the sum of the two main candidates on the left: Armando Guadiana (27%), from the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena), and Ricardo Mejia (17%), from the Labor Party (PT).
“It is an election already very sung. The left could not reconcile their differences and that ended up affecting the possibility of running a competitive unity candidacy,” reflected Castañón.
Coahuila would thus become the only state that has always been in the hands of the PRI, something that is explained by the low popularity that Morena, López Obrador’s party, has garnered in the region.
State of Mexico, a window to the Presidency
In the State of Mexico, however, the electoral race is tighter: according to the Polls.mx count, Delfina Gomezwho is running for Morena, the PT and the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), would have 56% of the votes; Alejandra del MoralPRI, PAN and PRD candidate, with 43%.
The minor difference is explained, in part, by the similarity of the proposals of both candidates, with water scarcity and security as banners of their campaign.
“But two completely different stories are facing each other: Del Moral, who calls to the past with a renewed vision, and Gómez, who seeks a transformation framed in the López Obrador project,” Sánchez wielded.
The election in the State of Mexico, he added, has always been held one year before the presidential elections and can serve as a national thermometer.
“The election in the State of Mexico was always a warning of what could happen, although it is not a clear rule. It will depend a lot on the issues that are being discussed throughout the country,” stressed the former INE counselor.
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