TIJUANA – In contrast with the tight presidential race, President Vicente Fox's National Action Party scored resounding victories in Baja California and across northern Mexico in Sunday's federal election, according to preliminary results from Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute.
Two years after losing the state's two largest cities to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, the PAN swept Baja California's eight federal electoral districts. Voters not only backed PAN presidential candidate Felipe Calderón but also favored PAN congressional candidates across the state.
Preliminary tallies from the institute's Web site yesterday showed that nearly half of Baja California's voters, 47.34 percent, backed Calderón, compared with 36.38 percent nationally.
“PANistas know how to learn from the lessons that the citizens deliver,” Salvador Morales, the state party president, said late Sunday. Baja California “has left a very clear message of what it wants, and what direction it wants for the country.”
The PAN was ahead in other states across northern Mexico, in contrast with the south and center, where a coalition led by the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, remained dominant, according to the preliminary results.
“Looking at the national map, one appreciates a strong polarization,” said Tonatiuh Guillén López, an analyst at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte near Tijuana. “We're looking at a panorama of two countries.”
The coalition led by Mexico's once-ruling PRI came in third place nationally, as it did in Baja California's presidential votes, the results show.
There were no smiling faces late Sunday at Tijuana's PRI headquarters, and state party president Mario Madrigal said he would not comment until final figures were released. Some party members blamed the PRI's poor showing on presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo.
“There was a bad presidential candidate, as well as disillusion with the local PRI governments,” said Antonio Cano, a former PRI president in Tijuana. Despite the PRI mayoral wins in Tijuana and Mexicali in 2004, “they didn't know how to consolidate these victories,” Cano said.
The results are important indicators as Baja California prepares for state and local elections next year. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, a close friend of Madrazo, has said he wants to run for governor, but the numbers do not bode well for any PRI candidate, analysts say.
Baja California has been a bastion of the PAN ever since Ernesto Ruffo Appel won the governorship in 1989. The party has held onto the governor's office, but it has also lost key races, such as the 1994 federal elections when voters overwhelmingly favored the PRI, and the 2004 mayoral races. PAN members said they were jarred by those losses and ramped up their organization, working to get out the vote and putting observers at polling stations across the state Sunday. By contrast, the “red tide” of PRI supporters who flooded the state in their party color two years ago was notably subdued.
“The relevant fact is that there was not the organized presence they had in 2004,” said Guillén, the colegio analyst.
The figures show Sunday's voter turnout in Baja California was among the lowest in Mexico, just more than 47 percent statewide, compared with a nationwide average of nearly 59 percent. But Guillén and others attributed the low number to the unusual mobility of voters in Baja California and the need to update voter rolls. The low number “was to be expected, not because of a disinterest in politics, but because of the demographic dynamic,” Guillén said.
Elsewhere along the northern border, the PAN also made a strong showing in states governed by the PRI, such as Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas. Vidal Garza of the Technological Institute of Monterrey said several factors could have strengthened the PAN's hand in these states.
One could have been a “punishment vote” against PRI governors, Garza said. “Citizens are now evaluating, and approving and in cases where it is necessary, punishing their governments.”
Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com
