Enrique Pena Nieto of the Mexican PRI party…..riograndeguardian.com
And the voters south of the border like their friends up north….
Seem to have the economy on their minds….
No single issue dominated the campaign, not the more than 50,000 killed in recent years in the efforts to control drug trafficking nor an economy that is growing but leaving behind the poor and failing to raise wages.
Instead, pollsters said, voters felt a general malaise and fatigue after 12 years of rule by the conservative National Action Party, which had thrown out the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, in 2000 in the first real democratic election here.
The possible return of the PRI shows the disenchantment many Mexicans feel toward the post-PRI leadership. The explosion of drug-related violence is high on the list of concerns, of course, both for Mexicans and for American policy makers, who have said they expect to work closely with the next president to strengthen justice institutions and reduce crime. But voters were equally or more focused on the economy. Some voters said on Sunday that they favored the PRI out of tradition or a sense of nostalgia for what they remembered as a more stable time.
“Better the old one you know than the new to get to know,” Jorge Osorio, 70, said, recalling the words of his grandfather as he voted near Mexico City for the PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Such is the taint of the PRI, which had stayed in power through rigged elections, corruption and patronage, that people were reluctant to admit they supported Mr. Peña Nieto. Leonor Acosta Chavira, 77, who waited to vote with about 300 people in Tijuana, said he was worried that others would get angry if they knew of his choice.
“I vote for the party no matter the candidate,” he said.
But others — and many declined to divulge their choice because of government admonishments for “voto secreto” — said they could not give the PRI another chance.
“The PRI had its opportunity for 70 years, and the country didn’t progress,” said Moises Basilio, 29, of Guerrero State, a supporter of the left-leaning candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who narrowly lost in 2006. “We’re a country with great potential. The problem is the government has never made the people a priority.”
Liliana Patiño, 33, a voter in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, just outside Mexico City, backed Josefina Vazquez Mota, the incumbent party’s candidate, because “I wanted to give them more time to complete what they started.”
Nearly 80 million Mexicans were eligible to vote, with turnout traditionally running about 60 percent….
Update….
Presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto led Mexico’s elections with about 40 percent of the vote, exit polls showed Sunday, signaling a return of his long-ruling party to power after a 12-year hiatus.
Conservative National Action Party candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota conceded almost immediately, saying none of the exit polls favored her, the first woman candidate for a major party in Mexico. Her party held the presidency for a dozen years after kicking out Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in 2000.
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This was likely a backlash against Calderon, whom some say failed to stop the War on Drugs with non-stop violence and if it hadn’t been for term limits, he would have been blown out by 30 points or more.