How important are the elections in the State of Mexico for the 2024 presidential elections?

( Spanish) — The June 4 elections in the State of Mexico summon the entity with the largest electoral roll in the country to define a new governor, something unprecedented.

Are 12,676,625 citizens eligible to vote in the elections, according to the National Electoral Institute (INE).

The candidates for the government of the State of Mexico They are Delfina Gómez —from the allied candidacy of the Morena, PT and PVEM parties —and Alejandra del Moral, from the Va por el Estado de México coalition of the PAN, PRI, PRD and Nueva Alianza Estado de México parties.

This election is not only seen as a state process, but as a thermometer on the possible preferences of voters towards the 2024 presidential election.

The power of the State of Mexico

The State of Mexico is the federal entity with the largest number of inhabitants in the country, 16.9 million, according to figures from 2020 from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). With an electoral roll of 12.6 million, the weight of the vote in the State of Mexico is significant.

To exemplify its dimension, this is approximately equivalent to the total number of inhabitants of El Salvador and Nicaragua together.

“It is 60% of the electoral roll of all of Central America, it is also the electoral roll equivalent to Chile and it is bigger than Uruguay and Paraguay combined. We are talking about a very large mass of votes,” explained Bernardo Barranco, a political analyst and Former Electoral Counselor of the State of Mexico.

Due to its electoral size, the State of Mexico is, in turn, a fundamental space to measure the power of the parties. “It is the main barn of votes at the national level, for both the PRI and the PAN here they have the highest number of votes at the national level. For Morena, here she also has the first or second place in the number of votes at the national level”, explains Professor Juan Carlos Villarreal Martínez, from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico.

For this reason, analysts believe that what happens in the elections in the State of Mexico could be a laboratory for the 2024 presidential elections.

“This percentage (of the State of Mexico) may be a final orientation prior to the elections on the 24th, which are presidential elections,” says Barranco.

“Whoever intends to achieve a good result in next year’s elections has to win the State of Mexico yes or yes. In the case of Morena, he would not only reach 23 governorships but would govern more than 60% of the nominal list, ”says the academic Villarreal. “For the coalition of Vamos por el Estado de México, winning it is vital to arrive in better conditions to compete in 2024.”

The political configuration: the last bastion of the PRI?

The state has 94 years of governments headed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI.

Barranco told that this is a crucial point about the election.

The sociologist explains that the PRI had in the State of Mexico “the largest and most powerful bastion, because it has the most powerful political group in the country there, the Atlacomulco Group.”

Barranco told Carmen Aristegui that the PRI “has been losing territories since 2015, and this is the last one it has left.”

That is why the possibility of the party losing power in this state is significant, says the analyst. “First: it also reflects the decline of the PRI, which in the 20th century dominated the country’s political life in an authoritarian manner.”

“For many parties it is losing the State of Mexico, for the PRI it is entering a process of agony because there would be no way to do it.”

The Participation Factor

In 2017, only about 53% of the voters in the state went to vote, so if the trend continues, the most populated places with the highest participation can determine the election.

Professor Villarreal assures that the weight falls on the voters of 10 of the 125 municipalities that the state has, since 50% of the votes are concentrated there.

“In the case of the PRI/PAN/PRD coalition, there we can locate starting with Cuatitlán Izcalli, Atizapán, Naucalpan, Tlanepantla, all of which are in the urban corridor, and Toluca, which is the state capital and which provides the largest number of hard votes for the PRI”.

“And then, in the other group, there is Ecatepec, there is Nezahualcóyotl, there is Texcoco, Chimalhuacán, Valle de Chalco, those other five that Morena won, and that in all the surveys that have been published are very repetitive.”

With information from Rey Rodríguez, Krupskaia Alís, Uriel Blanco and Carmen Aristegui.