Exit polls show Enrique Peña Nieto winning Mexico's presidency - Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Millions of Mexicans voted Sunday to restore to power the once-authoritarian party they dumped 12 years ago, exit polls showed, while also delivering a harsh rebuke to a government that advanced democratic rule but also saw the country plunge into grisly violence.
Enrique Peña Nieto, the telegenic candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was ahead in Sunday's vote by as much as 11 percentage points, according to exit surveys conducted by pollsters and Mexican media. His campaign director, Luis Videgaray, claimed victory within minutes of polls closing.
"Enrique Peña Nieto is the next president of Mexico," Videgaray said.
But Peña Nieto's nearest competitor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City and leader of a coalition of leftist parties, did not concede defeat.
Peña Nieto's win would return to power the party that ruled virtually unchallenged for seven decades, until defeat in 2000. Lopez Obrador lost the 2006 presidential race to Felipe Calderon by less than 1 percentage point, refused to recognize the results and touched off a wave of protests that paralyzed Mexico City for months. His actions now remain the great unknown of this election.
Josefina Vazquez Mota, candidate for the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, in office since ousting the PRI in 2000, was by all accounts a distant third. She conceded defeat less than an hour after voting ended.
If the trends hold, Sunday's vote will prove disastrous for the conservative party that came to office with enormous promise but has left many Mexicans disillusioned with their nation's democratic transition and a raging drug war.
Calderon is barred by law from running for a second term.
Voting was mostly peaceful Sunday, with numerous complaints of slow-to-open polling stations, long lines and shortages of ballots. The army announced on the eve of the vote that it was redoubling forces in the border city of Nuevo Laredo after suspected drug traffickers detonated a car bomb outside City Hall on Friday.
Tens of thousands of troops are deployed across Mexico to fight powerful drug cartels who supply users in the United States with much of their cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. That fight, launched by Calderon soon after he took office, has claimed more than 50,000 lives in nearly six years.
Mexicans dismayed with the violence, which has also touched off waves of kidnapping and extortion, and dissatisfied with sluggish economic growth seem willing to return to a party that once represented an undemocratic system of coercion and repression, but claims to have reformed.
At the PRI's headquarters, the victory party was underway moments after the first exit poll results were announced. Scores of employees of Mexico's state-owned oil company, Pemex, decked out in red T-shirts waved flags with the party logo and chanted, "We are going to win! We are going to win!"
Cesar Santiago, wearing a red hard hat adorned with a PRI sticker, said a Peña Nieto win would bring improvements to the country's lethargic economy and reduce skyrocketing violence. "It was a failure," Santiago said of the drug war. "It should have been better planned, with a better strategy."
Santiago said the PRI had changed since last time it ruled, a reign infamous for corruption and, occasionally, strong-arm tactics to maintain its almost complete dominance over Mexican life. "The PRI-istas who are there now are young. They really want Mexico to improve."
But a few rows away were signs of the old, coercive PRI. Four young women sat gripping rolled-up PRI flags. They said they were required by bosses at Pemex to attend the PRI party. "If we don't come, we don't go back to work," said one of the women, who declined to give her name to avoid being punished by the company. She said she voted for Lopez Obrador.
"It's like the '60s," she said, referring to coercive PRI tactics of the past. "It hasn't gone away."
In Atlacomulco, Peña Nieto's birthplace outside the capital in the state of Mexico, the mood from early in the day was triumphant. Peña Nieto served as governor of the state, Mexico's most populous, until last year.
Voters in Atlacomulco, a bastion of PRI sympathy, jostled hoping for a photograph with Peña Nieto, 45. Comments from Mexicans showing up to cast their ballots go a long way in explaining his support.
"The PAN did not know how to govern," said Ricardo Avila, 45, a cashier at a convenience store, referring to Calderon's party. "They had their chance and wasted it. Time for the PRI."
Disappointment with the lack of democratic reforms during the last 12 years of PAN government, plus the violence, has fed opposition to the ruling party. Voters turned in droves to the PRI. The PRI also spent years carefully building up its support at the local level and, in fine Mexican tradition, does not hesitate to pay voters to vote.
MEXICO CITY — Millions of Mexicans voted Sunday to restore to power the once-authoritarian party they dumped 12 years ago, exit polls showed, while also delivering a harsh rebuke to a government that advanced democratic rule but also saw the country plunge into grisly violence.
Enrique Peña Nieto, the telegenic candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was ahead in Sunday's vote by as much as 11 percentage points, according to exit surveys conducted by pollsters and Mexican media. His campaign director, Luis Videgaray, claimed victory within minutes of polls closing.
"Enrique Peña Nieto is the next president of Mexico," Videgaray said.
But Peña Nieto's nearest competitor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City and leader of a coalition of leftist parties, did not concede defeat.
Peña Nieto's win would return to power the party that ruled virtually unchallenged for seven decades, until defeat in 2000. Lopez Obrador lost the 2006 presidential race to Felipe Calderon by less than 1 percentage point, refused to recognize the results and touched off a wave of protests that paralyzed Mexico City for months. His actions now remain the great unknown of this election.
Josefina Vazquez Mota, candidate for the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, in office since ousting the PRI in 2000, was by all accounts a distant third. She conceded defeat less than an hour after voting ended.
If the trends hold, Sunday's vote will prove disastrous for the conservative party that came to office with enormous promise but has left many Mexicans disillusioned with their nation's democratic transition and a raging drug war.
Calderon is barred by law from running for a second term.
Voting was mostly peaceful Sunday, with numerous complaints of slow-to-open polling stations, long lines and shortages of ballots. The army announced on the eve of the vote that it was redoubling forces in the border city of Nuevo Laredo after suspected drug traffickers detonated a car bomb outside City Hall on Friday.
Tens of thousands of troops are deployed across Mexico to fight powerful drug cartels who supply users in the United States with much of their cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. That fight, launched by Calderon soon after he took office, has claimed more than 50,000 lives in nearly six years.
Mexicans dismayed with the violence, which has also touched off waves of kidnapping and extortion, and dissatisfied with sluggish economic growth seem willing to return to a party that once represented an undemocratic system of coercion and repression, but claims to have reformed.
At the PRI's headquarters, the victory party was underway moments after the first exit poll results were announced. Scores of employees of Mexico's state-owned oil company, Pemex, decked out in red T-shirts waved flags with the party logo and chanted, "We are going to win! We are going to win!"
Cesar Santiago, wearing a red hard hat adorned with a PRI sticker, said a Peña Nieto win would bring improvements to the country's lethargic economy and reduce skyrocketing violence. "It was a failure," Santiago said of the drug war. "It should have been better planned, with a better strategy."
Santiago said the PRI had changed since last time it ruled, a reign infamous for corruption and, occasionally, strong-arm tactics to maintain its almost complete dominance over Mexican life. "The PRI-istas who are there now are young. They really want Mexico to improve."
But a few rows away were signs of the old, coercive PRI. Four young women sat gripping rolled-up PRI flags. They said they were required by bosses at Pemex to attend the PRI party. "If we don't come, we don't go back to work," said one of the women, who declined to give her name to avoid being punished by the company. She said she voted for Lopez Obrador.
"It's like the '60s," she said, referring to coercive PRI tactics of the past. "It hasn't gone away."
In Atlacomulco, Peña Nieto's birthplace outside the capital in the state of Mexico, the mood from early in the day was triumphant. Peña Nieto served as governor of the state, Mexico's most populous, until last year.
Voters in Atlacomulco, a bastion of PRI sympathy, jostled hoping for a photograph with Peña Nieto, 45. Comments from Mexicans showing up to cast their ballots go a long way in explaining his support.
"The PAN did not know how to govern," said Ricardo Avila, 45, a cashier at a convenience store, referring to Calderon's party. "They had their chance and wasted it. Time for the PRI."
Disappointment with the lack of democratic reforms during the last 12 years of PAN government, plus the violence, has fed opposition to the ruling party. Voters turned in droves to the PRI. The PRI also spent years carefully building up its support at the local level and, in fine Mexican tradition, does not hesitate to pay voters to vote.