General elections were held in Mexico on 1 July 2018. Voters elected a new president to serve a six-year term, 128 members of the Senate for six years and 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies for three years. It was one of the largest election days in Mexican history, with most of the nation's states holding state and local elections on the same day, including nine governorships, with over 3,400 positions subject to elections at all levels of government. It was the most violent campaign Mexico has experienced in recent history, with 130 political figures killed since September 2017.
Incumbent president Enrique Peña Nieto was not constitutionally eligible for a second term. Incumbent members of the legislature were term-limited, so all members of Congress were newly elected. As a consequence of the political reforms of 2014, the members of the legislature elected in the 2018 elections were the first allowed to run for reelection in subsequent elections. The National Electoral Institute (INE) officially declared the new process underway on 8 September 2017.
The presidential election was won by Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) running as the candidate of the Juntos Haremos Historia, who secured a landslide margin of almost 31 points. This was the first time a candidate won an outright majority (according to official vote counts) since 1988 and the first time a candidate not from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or its predecessors had done so since the Mexican Revolution. The elections also marked the first time that a coalition of political parties (excluding the PRI) supporting a single presidential candidate achieved majorities in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. The elections represented the PRI's greatest electoral setback and the worst for a sitting administration since universal male suffrage was implemented in 1917.
Electoral system
The country's president is elected by plurality in a single round of voting.
The 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies are elected to three-year terms by two methods; 300 are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting, with the remaining 200 elected from five regional constituencies by proportional representation, with seats allocated using the simple quotient and largest remainder method. No party is allowed to hold more than 300 seats. Members may hold office for up to four consecutive terms.
The 128 members of the Senate are elected to six-year terms, concurrent with the president, and also elected by two methods, with 96 elected in 32 three-member constituencies based on the states and 32 elected in a single nationwide constituency by proportional representation. In the three-member constituencies, two winning candidates shall be allocated to the party receiving the highest number of votes and one seat to the party receiving the second-highest number of votes. Members may hold office for up to two terms.
Presidential candidates
Por México al Frente
Por México al Frente (English: "For Mexico to the Front") is the alliance of the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and Citizens' Movement (which both nominated Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the elections of 2006 and 2012) formed in an effort to defeat both the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA).
On 5 September, the electoral alliance was officially registered with the INE as Frente Ciudadano por México (Citizen Front for Mexico). On 8 December the coalition changed its name to Por México al Frente (Mexico to the Front). The next day, Ricardo Anaya Cortés, president of the PAN, resigned from his position and expressed his intent to be the alliance's candidate.
The former first lady Margarita Zavala submitted her resignation from the PAN on 6 October, after being a member for 33 years, and registered as an independent candidate six days later. She sought the presidency through an independent bid, but withdrew on 16 May 2018.
Nominee
Todos por México
Todos por México (English: "Everyone for Mexico") is the coalition composed of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), and the New Alliance Party (PANAL). On 9 August 2017, the PRI revised its requirements for presidential candidates, eliminating the requirement that candidates must have 10 years of party membership, and allowing non-party members to lead the party. This move benefited finance secretary José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, who is not a member of the PRI, as well as education secretary Aurelio Nuño Mayer, whose length of membership was questioned. Meade was considered the favorite, because while the PRI was dogged by scandal and controversy, Meade was personally unaffected.
On 27 November, Meade resigned from cabinet and announced his intention to be the PRI's candidate in the upcoming election. He quickly received the support of President Peña Nieto and PRI-linked institutions such as the CTM union. With no challengers, Meade became the presumptive nominee. On 18 February 2018, the PRI held its convention of delegates, where Meade was formally selected as the party's presidential candidate; Meade is the PRI's first presidential candidate in its almost 90-year history not to be a member of the party.
Due to the circumstances of Meade's candidacy, critics compared his selection to the PRI's historical practice of dedazo ("tap of the finger"), where presidents hand-picked their successor.
The coalition was initially named Meade Ciudadano por México (English: Citizen Meade for Mexico), until the INE deemed it unconstitutional to include a candidate's name within the coalition's name, on the grounds that the presidential candidate would receive advertising from every piece of campaign advertising of the coalition used for local candidates. The coalition subsequently changed its name to Todos por México (Everyone for Mexico).
Nominee
Juntos Haremos Historia
Juntos Haremos Historia (English: "Together We Will Make History") is the coalition composed of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Social Encounter Party (PES).
On 12 December Andrés Manuel López Obrador registered as the presumptive nominee for MORENA and submitted his resignation as party president. This was López Obrador's third presidential bid; the previous two attempts were with the PRD. After the 2012 presidential election, López Obrador left the PRD to found MORENA. This was MORENA's first presidential election. Joining MORENA in the Juntos Haremos Historia coalition was the left-wing Labor Party and the right-wing Social Encounter Party.
Nominee
Independents
For the first time in Mexico's modern democratic history, candidates were allowed to run for the presidency as independents. Several people announced their intention to contest the election as an independent candidate.
Margarita Zavala, a lawyer, former deputy and wife of former president Felipe Calderón, had originally intended to run as the PAN nominee; however, on 6 October, she left the party and launched an independent bid. Explaining her decision, she said that the formation of Por México al Frente meant there would be no internal PAN selection, denying her a chance to be a candidate. Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, the independent governor of Nuevo León, also announced his candidacy, as did Senator Armando Ríos Piter.
The National Indigenous Congress announced on 28 May 2017 the election of María de Jesús Patricio Martínez as their spokeswoman and indigenous representative for the 2018 general election, aiming to obtain an independent candidacy.
Only Zavala gathered enough signatures to appear on the ballot; however, on 10 April the Electoral Court accepted an appeal from Rodríguez and ordered the National Electoral Institute to register him as candidate.
On 16 May Zavala announced she was withdrawing her candidacy.
Campaign
Timeline
January
As in the 2006 and 2012 federal elections, the 2018 campaign featured numerous accusations and attack advertisements directed at the leftist frontrunner candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who contested the elections with the support of his party MORENA. A campaign described as "Red Scare-like" was used by the PRI and PAN candidates to convince voters that a López Obrador victory would turn Mexico into "another Venezuela".
In a speech, PRI president Enrique Ochoa Reza said that "if the people from MORENA like Venezuela so much, they should just go and live there". The PRI was believed to have hired Venezuelan right-wing political strategist JJ Rendón to work in their campaign, as he stated in January that he would do "everything within the law to prevent López Obrador from becoming President"; Rendón had previously worked for the PRI during Peña Nieto's 2012 presidential campaign.
In January, former president Felipe Calderón shared a video on via social media, in which a Venezuelan citizen living in Mexico warned voters not to vote for López Obrador, as he would put Mexico in the "path to ruin" like Chavismo had done in her country. It later surfaced that the woman, whose name is Carmen Martilez, is an actress who previously had uploaded a video in which she asked for street vendors to be "exterminated".
That same month, the PRI began to claim that López Obrador's campaign was supported by "Venezuelan and Russian interests". López Obrador dismissed the accusations and later joked about them, calling himself "Andrés Manuelovich".
Later in January, citizens across the country received phone calls originating in the city of Puebla, in which a recorded message warned them not to vote for López Obrador because he supposedly agreed to sell Mexico's oil to "the Russians". The MORENA representative in Puebla asked for an investigation into the phone calls. In March, telephone company Axtel traced the number that made the calls, revealing it was a number that the government of Puebla (whose governor is from the PAN) controlled. Puebla's government denied the accusations. Also in January, López Obrador uploaded a video via social media asking president Peña Nieto and PRI president Ochoa Reza to "calm down", and advised them to take some "Amlodipine".
A jingle entitled Movimiento Naranja, which was recorded for the political party Movimiento Ciudadano (which is part of the Por México al Frente coalition, along with the PAN and the PRD) and performed by an indigenous child called Yuawi, became popular and Yuawi turned into a celebrity overnight.
Drawing on its success, the pre-candidate for the Frente, Ricardo Anaya recorded a video in which he performed the song with Yuawi.
PRI candidate José Antonio Meade was accused of plagiarism when it was noted that one of his ads, in which he criticized a "populist" speech on TV, was identical to an ad that was used by Justin Trudeau when he became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in 2013.
February
Later in February, the PRI's Enrique Ochoa Reza tweeted that PRI politicians who defected to MORENA as Prietos que no aprietan (Dark-skinned people who can't get a hold) while trying to make a pun on the word PRI-etos (because morena is a synonym for prieto). The expression was criticized, and Ochoa Reza quickly deleted the tweet as it was interpreted to be racist.
Aristegui Noticias published that Ochoa Reza apologized, and also criticized the insensitive expression, additionally commenting that the part que ya no aprietan (who cannot hold) could also be interpreted as misogynistic due to being a double entendre referring to women in relation to the number of sexual relations they have had in their lifetime. Ochoa Reza's tweet apologized to dark-skinned people but not to women. Later Sinembargo.mx revealed that José Antonio Meade justified Enrique Ochoa's usage of the expression, by saying: uno se excede y es natural (English: one gets-ahead-of-themselves and it is natural) and saying that his quick apology talked positively about him.