(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s ruling Morena party won four of six states it didn’t already control in local elections on Sunday, consolidating President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s political power further beyond his traditional strongholds in the south of the country.
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Morena and allied parties were projected to win the states of Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Hidalgo and Tamaulipas, the latter of which is located in the country’s northeast bordering Texas, according to rapid count results posted by Mexico’s electoral institute on Twitter. A coalition of opposition parties including the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, and the PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of last century, won the states of Durango and Aguascalientes.
The results were broadly in line with expectations by pollsters, even if Morena officials said they aimed to win all six states.
The election was a litmus test of Lopez Obrador’s support after three and a half years of government, and of the strength of opposition parties, which have banded together against him by putting forward joint candidates. Since Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, won the presidency in 2018, Morena and its allies have swept across the country, and with Sunday’s results they will govern 22 of Mexico’s 32 states.
Mexico’s economy hasn’t yet recovered the level when AMLO took power in December 2018 after being greatly affected by the pandemic, with the fifth-most Covid-19 deaths of any country. But the 68-year-old president remains widely popular, in part thanks to his anti-corruption agenda and social programs that give working-class Mexicans monthly cash transfers.
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Morena’s strong backing “reflect to a very significant extent the enduring popularity of President Lopez Obrador, his long political coattails, and the impact of the social programs created by the administration,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief Latin America economist Alberto Ramos wrote in a note before Sunday’s vote.
A strong Morena performance would put it in a favorable position to win the presidency again in 2024, when Lopez Obrador steps down after his single six-year term. It could also spell the end of state control by the PRI, which governed Mexico for decades of one-party rule until 2000, Eurasia Group wrote this week.
After Sunday’s results, the party will govern by itself just two states — both of which are up for grabs next year.
(Recasts story to include results from Sunday night.)
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