this runs 90 minutes.

>> good afternoon. welcome back to the wilson center. we are less than a week away from a historic election in mexico. we are delighted to have with us three of the leading experts in botho on politics, executive, presidential, legislative, state-level, etc. this is a hand-picked panel, not three people we found on the streets of mexico city. wendia,ed to have jorge a global fellow with the mexico institute. his last presentation on the election race left a big mark.

jorge will be giving as an overview about where we stand in the polling numbers. many of you already know what the presidential race looks like, but jorge has other data that will give you extra texture. delighted to have jerry langston -- joey langston, a longtime friend from a mexican university who is an expert on state-level politics and on governance in mexico. i have asterisk talk about the state level. and last but by no means least, eric mcgarr, a former colleague of mine from the political science department. eric will be talking about legislative politics. we will have three opening presentations of 15 to 20 minutes, then half an hour for q&a. jorge, i will ask you to lead us off. duncan, thankou,

you to the mexico institute for the invitation. view ofyou another electoral preference at this moment, five days before the be using i am going to developed by a polling aggregator you may already know. this morning or last night and this morning, two polls were published. polls showstion of the incorporation of these two polls. the news about the polls that were published yesterday and today is the advantage of candidateer the other . unlike the other polls published in the past. both polls show a more or less

comfortable lead of five .ercentage points if you look at the data, it is a huge advantage, about 27 percent, 47 to 27. mexicanook at the newspapers and media, you will see there is a lot of debate about who is going to be in the second place. if you look at the statements made by the candidates, you would think they are giving a very serious fight for second place. this is kind of incredible. that has been the logic of the campaign, because as you can see -- lopez obrador is the only candidate who has increased his

lead since the beginning of the campaign. if you look at the aggregate numbers, lopez obrador in points inad 38%, 39% electoral preferences. right now it is 47-48%. if you compare these numbers with november, december of late last year, lopez obrador has increased his support about 10 to 12%. the other candidates have not moved that much. probably the most important february, place in when there were all these criticisms or accusations of money laundering against ricardo which turned into increasing support for lopez obrador and anaya remaining with the same level of support. this was probably the key moment , and i will show you later some

figures that support this field. -- thatuld this view support this view. today it is very clear who the leader is. this is not a parliamentary system or like the u.s., where the electoral college decides who wins, so it is very clear that lopez obrador has a big and manage. -- has a big advantage. what would happen for him to lose? people talk about pulling but you in the past, would need a very catastrophic event where the polls were really, really wrong for this result not to be true, because the advantage is so huge. you can see the different polls that have different percentages for lopez obrador. , but just 10 days

ago, there were polls giving lopez obrador a level of support about 50%. even with 10 points error by the polls, lopez obrador christo win. the other thing is, look at the trends. we don't see a trend of the second-place going up and first-place declining, like happened in 2012, 2006, 2000 year election. for me, those are the two things. a comfortable lead for lopez that doesd a trend not say anything about the second-place growing. you can see clearly hear how lopez obrador has increased

, on the campaign trail. it is inc. -- it is clear the level has increased especially since late december, when all the candidates were known. this is a very important theme, because the other candidates remain stable or decline. of volatility, and obviously one of the reasons of electoral volatility in presidential systems are the candidates. how well a party does or how bad it does depends a lot on the identity of the candidates. howcan see also here opinion about the candidates has changed during the campaign. november of last year, lopez

obrador was a divisive figure in mexican public opinion. 33% had a good opinion about him , 32% had a negative opinion. this was more or less like what happened in 2006. the culture -- the country divided about how good lopez obrador would be. but then you can see that his positives began to increase a lot. candidate that has that trend. he has more negative than positive, but improves a lot. areincreasing positives greater name recognition. got a promising start, then stabilized. if you look at the balance of opinion, lopez obrador is the only one that has a positive

balance of opinion, which means his positives outweigh his negatives. the other two candidates are in the negative area. so this more or less tells you the whole story about the campaign. so what happened at the level of social groups? are thet two measures actual official results of 2006 and 2012. you can see the dilution -- devolution of support for lopez obrador. this is the region of the pacific north. this was an area, a part of the country that did not like lopez obrador, either in 2006 or 2012. you can see that felipe calderon was able to win the presidency

because he had a very clear advantage of more than 20% over lopez obrador in 2006. in 2012, the story is more or less the same between pena and lopez obrador. lopez obrador never got more than 24% of the vote in these northern regions of the country. right now, we are seeing two things -- a very clear increase in support for lopez obrador in this area, this region. look also what happened in february of this year. anaya and lopez obrador were tied. but after the accusations of money laundering against ricardo , the one who took advantage of that was lopez obrador. likecreased his support 14% and anaya lost about 9% in this area.

right now, it is almost a two to one relationship between lopez obrador and anaya in this area. pri has not got any increase of support in this region. i think this graph and this region really shows you what happened during the campaign, the accusations of money laundering translate into decreasing support for anaya and increasing support for lopez obrador, and that pri did not benefit at all from this. is veryregion that important to take a look at is the southern part of mexico, the most underdeveloped areas of the country. you can see that lopez obrador in 2006 and 2012 was very

competitive in that area. his main opposition was the pri. prier in 2006 or 2012, the never got below 30% of support. but then -- and this is another important trend that explains what is going on in mexico right now -- there was a very important crisis for the pri in the states that compose the southern parts of mexico, especially veracruz, which is very large, where the former pri governor is now in jail, and the same thing happened with another governor. so at the beginning of the campaign, what we have is this region just went for lopez ,brador in an overwhelming way 60% of support.

nothing has changed that much since the beginning of the year. this is something that happened either in 2017 or 2016. look at the decline of the pri, has not changed that much. a three to one advantage of lopez obrador over the pri in this region. this explains a lot why we have right now lopez obrador at a level that has him being the expected or kind of unique in this regard, because we are used to having a lot of electoral fragmentation. it was very difficult for a candidate to get over 40% support. nowadays, we have lopez obrador

at 47%. some other important changes -- look at gender. there has always been a base of support -- males have always been a base of support for lopez obrador, in a higher proportion than females. but that is not the case anymore. what happened in the campaign is that lopez obrador was favored to gain the female vote, especially after the accusations against ricardo anaya. at the beginning of the campaign, there was a tie in the female vote between anaya and lopez obrador. after the accusations, the advantage of lopez obrador has increased a lot.

that is also part of the explanation of what happened with the dynamics of the campaign. it was very competitive at the beginning of the year, but later on they just went for lopez obrador and abandoned ricardo anaya. what lopez obrador gained in this group is what anaya lost. nothing happened with support for jose antonio meade. in all this collapse, you can see a lot of stability in support for the pri, which is also a confirmation that the pri is already counting on his hard-core supporters. has not moved that much during the campaign. education is another important story. unlike what many people think, with low levels

of education, which tend to be the poor ones in mexico, they didn't support lopez obrador that much. it was a very competitive group, probably because of official programs from the government, social policy. but right now, especially during the campaign, support for lopez obrador among this group has increased to 50%. the previous election was only 36%, 28% of support for lopez obrador. the story of the campaign is also illustrated with the better educated people in mexico. in 2006, this group was not convinced of lopez obrador. actually they voted more for felipe calderon. these people with college

education tend to be better off in society, so you can also argue that this was kind of a social class vote and this group was not with lopez obrador in 2006. nowadays, since the beginning of the campaign, it was clearly in favor of lopez obrador. so to sum up some of these figures, you can see the advantage that lopez obrador has is more or less the same among all social groups. unlike the past, there is not a division in mexican society, some regions support him, some of those, some social groups are against him. nowadays, we see that lopez obrador is the front runner in these different social groups. with the issues,

corruption, which is the most pressing issue for the mexican public that needs to be solved. security is one of them. 40% say so. 27% say corruption. economic conditions, 50%. you see clearly that lopez obrador has the advantage on the issue of corruption. people who think that corruption is the most pressing issue, almost half of them support lopez obrador. this is an issue that clearly benefits lopez obrador. look at support for anaya, does not change that much depending on the issue that you care about. probably he is also a little better with people who think about security. de is in a clear third-place, regardless of which

issue you care the most about. the story with a different set of questions, what should be the priority of the next government. corruption, also people who care more about corruption support lopez obrador then people who think security should be the top issue. so corruption is playing to the ,dvantage of lopez obrador although it is not a clear-cut issue. lopez obrador does pretty well regardless of the issue you care about. decreases a support little bit more. nafta. 67% of the mexican population supports nafta, says that it is good for the mexican economy. you don't see differences in support for the candidates, depending on your attitudes

toward nafta. support for lopez obrador is more or less the same regardless of your opinion about nafta and it has not become an issue during this campaign. what is most striking is the mexican public is really in favorite of nafta -- really in favor of nafta, because if trump does not like nafta and mexican people does not like trump, therefore we want nafta. [laughter] 68% say mexico should continue nafta. and also you don't see changes in electoral support for the candidates depending on their attitudes towards nafta. so to sum up, what we are looking at right now is a very comfortable lead of lopez obrador. we don't see a trend that the which place is growing,

makes it more difficult to catch up with lopez obrador. ago remember, six years now-president pena was going down in the polls when the election took place. lopez obrador was going up. came as aence of 7% surprise to some extent. you could see the trend that this may actually have happened before, but now we are not seeing those trends. the preferences have been more or less stable and if the second-place does not increase his level of support, he is never going to catch lopez obrador. societynd, we don't see as divided regarding lopez obrador, as in the past. nowadays he is getting support from all the important socioeconomic groups we have analyzed in the polls.

it is not a society that is as polarized regarding lopez obrador. also, this explains why the negative campaigning has not worked out for the pri or for pan. the mexican public does not have a highly critical view of lopez obrador as it used to in the past. positive opinions about lopez obrador are twice the size of the negative opinions and that tells you a lot about the dynamic of this election. i would stop at this. duncan: thank you very much for that. i can see a lot of people taking photographs of the slides. we will have everything on the website shortly after the presentation, so don't worry about that. i want to thank you for being here. this is a sold-out event. if you did not get your tickets

on ticketmaster on time, i will point you to step up next time. we are going to move on to eric mcgarr to talk about the legislative perspective or outlook. while we load the presentation, eric -- i don't know where you want to sit or stand. ok, perfect. the microphone is yours. eric: thank you. while my presentation is being fromded, i am eric mcgarr -- that's it. that one, you. eah. thank you. citye from itam in mexico and i will be speaking of the congressional races next sunday. as you probably know, all seats in mexico's bicameral congress are up for grabs the.

grabs -- grabs next sunday. this has been a much less salient elections than the one for the presidential seat, but i will try to argue it is equally important. we can expect very important changes in this congressional election. although the forecast is a bit harder to do, because unlike presidential races, there is very little: that is actually -- that istle polling relevant to compute. i will guesstimate based on some of the information that is around. you probably know that mexico's electoral system has some elements that are like the u.s. and others that make it different. we have a mixed electoral system. in the lower chamber, voters have one vote, which they give to one candidate in their

district. but that district -- there is a winner decided by plurality, but the vote carries on to a proportional representation on a parallel track, where party seats are distributed by percentage of those chairs -- of vote shares to parties. in the upper chamber, you also have one vote that you give to two candidates in your state. the party or list with a , thenity gets two seeds the runner-up gets an accuracy. there are 32 extra seats distributed by proportional representation. this is not too different from the german system, but quite different from the american. orena, lopez obrador's party, signed a coalition agreement with two other parties. all three major candidates are

running on multiparty coalitions. na is made up of two new , aties, his own, morena formerly french party and an evangelical party. so it is a pretty odd coalition. what is striking is that these coalition agreements have to distribute the pie exactly. the distribution is quite surprising once you see that the small partners got incredibly large shares of seats or nominations. if you look at the left column, nominees for federal district, there are 300. of those, half of them have a morena candidate but the other half are split between an evangelical and others are for

pt. given the numbers we saw with jorge and the potential for a single member win that the coalition might have, that will bring a substantial amount of formerly very small or nonexistent parties into the chambers. , therelook at the senate are 19 of 32 states and one with no coalition where both names come from morena. then there are 12 states where only one or none come from lopez obrador's party. he actually gave up a huge prize , the minor coalition parties. that is a big puzzle, why this actually happened. there is also the possibility that some of these are what are usually called watermelons, these morena types that are pretending to be nominated by the other party, but we don't know much about that.

those are things we will have to investigate further later. predicting the lower house is the tough call, because there is no district level polling. there are a few polls at the state level, but those tend to lack representative samples for the state and they do not give a good idea of how the vote is distributed geographically, which makes sense. it is important to know which districts might be won by lopez obrador's huge margins in the states. , there used to be both concentrated in the capital for pan and not so much in the countryside. that might be changing, but really we have no clue. whether this translates into a landslide of single-member seats victories for lopez obrador or not remains to be seen. i will use a simple rule of thumb. if you take lopez obrador's coalition presented to a vote,

that translates into a percentage of seats they might win. given the seat distribution, we should expect half of those to go for marina candidates and one quarter each for the two minor partners. there is one advantage trying to guess. -- trying to guess what the percentage of votes. it is not too hard in mexico because presidential coattails tend to be larger than the u.s. at the end of the 19th century in the u.s., there was a one-to-one relationship between an extra point in the presidential race that would buy the presidential candidate's party an extra point in congress. that has been eroding the past century, but in mexico, at least prd,he left, but the the former party that lopez

obrador abandoned, used to have basically a half point correlation between presidential votes and congressional votes. given that this new party, we could expect very large presidential coattails. if you look at the campaign signs in mexico, you typically see lopez obrador and one of the lower ticket candidates across the country. coattails should be hot. -- it should be high. we can take the numbers for the presidential race as a good guess of what the congressional vote might look like. given that, we could basically with a 50% vote for amlo, anaya meade 19, we can expect -- this is the floor. of the a 50% share majority for morena candidates, if not more. the question is what happens with the opposition, whether pan

and prd hold onto boats within their coalition remains to be seen. what will happen in the lower chamber of congress is we will experience a non-pri unified government for the first time since mexico became democratic. that is a major shift in what we have been experiencing in the country, whether or not the coalition, which is quite diverse, holds on or not in hard times also remains to be seen. that will be something to be looking forward, a coalition for the president's party. basically a majority for the president's coalition. on the other hand, whether the pan, which will be presumably the largest opposition party, actually manages to hold them accountable depends on whether they themselves are not subject to internal warfare, given their disastrous results.

so this looks like a very different congress than what we have been seeing the last decade and a half or two tickets. for the upper chamber, it is easier, given the rules. you just need to know which coalition comes first or second in each state. there is not a definite result there, but basically with some guesswork, we could think that amlo's coalition could come first and at least 29 states. second place went mostly fall for the frente but split evenly among the rest, with one independent candidate. senately we would have a that is even much more strongly controlled by the president or the future presidents coalition than the lower house. with again, pan as the potentially big opposition party.

whether or not that becomes relevant remains to be seen. i would just like to touch on other aspects that should make this a very -- i mean, let us expect important changes. if we look at morena, the parties nomination methods, they use a very odd or uncommon nomination rule. for single-member districts, half the districts are selected randomly and appointed by the national party, which is common in mexico. and then district parties, the party affiliates in each district elect the other half of the 300 single-member district. for the proportional representation lists, every third name is nominated by the national party and the other two are elected by chance, by lottery. opinion democracy. basically every district sends 10 names for a national lottery

and two thirds of the proportional representation list, randomly. the rationale for this is basically to avoid the secular factionalism and the mexican left. sincead been infighting they became a party -- or several parties. this is one way to restrict machine politics inside the party, at least that is what they claim. the question remains of what is the expected behavior of these three types of basically randomly selected party basis versus the national based appointees will look like. another thing that is important to keep in mind is something that has been characteristic of mexican politics since 1934 has been single term limits. those are off the books now. in 2014, they were surprisingly removed from our constitution. now federal deputies can reelect

of the four consecutive terms, senators up to two consecutive terms. they need to be renominated by the same party that elected them, there is a party clause. this actually kicks off the next midterm election. this will be the first slate of candidates that could, if they were interested, have a longer horizon in their legislative career by trying to cultivate their constituents and not just trying to get a new appointment or a new nomination. there is potentially a huge change. there is also big limits, if we look at other democracies that allow reelection. in latin america, not all of them -- some of them have big turnover rates. argentina perhaps has the least returning legislators since democratic times, 15% approximately. brazil and chile are 42% and

59%. a big contrast with the united states, where it is basically universal. you get more than three fourths of incumbents returning every congressional election. if we look at the 1920's very fast, mexico allowed reelection back then. the rates of return did not look too bad, given that we were not even democratic back then. inthe end before the reform 1934 -- approximating brazil nowadays in the mexican chamber. whether that happens again or not remains to be seen, but there should be something else to be looking at given the new slate. i will skip these for the sake of time. to wrap up, there is major changes in congress to be expected. this would not be this light or incremental changes we have been

experiencing over the past three or four decades. this will amount to a discrete jump. we are probably going to experience the unified non-pri government for the first time with a very split opposition. a new party system is likely. i did not have time to produce that graph, but if we look at the vote share and share of seats that three major parties have won in the last election, they typically amounted to at least 80%. that is no longer true. pan, and prd combined will not capture 50% of the votes and seats. that is a massive change. we will see a majority of two newcomers, morena as the evangelicals with a formally french, don't know what to expect party. and new entrants will be on the rise.

reelection kicks in and the next round. this will be an altogether different, at least in potential set of events in mexico's congressional election. thank you very much. duncan: thank you so much, eric. [applause] up perfectlyet it for the grand finale, looking at the state level in these elections on sunday. joy, thank you for being here with us. i have admired your work for a long time, so delighted to have you present to us. joy: thank you so much. right, well. i think all of our talks are going basically in the same direction, which is -- when jorge opened it up, it is another historical election in mexico. they have all been historic since basically 1988 or 1994, because something new and interesting happens.

they were always elections that were leading to more democracy rather than less democracy, more stability rather than less stability. what i think is interesting in that2018 elections is something is coming to an end, the mexican party system, and something -- we don't know -- this is something you pointed out a few seconds ago -- something is coming and we don't really know what it is or if it will be good for democracy and stability or bad. so let's get this show on the road. i am going to talk today about state elections. -- mexican government officials and mexican politicians love to change electoral rules. i don't really know whether it was a 2014 or 2008 change or when it happened, but it was one

of the later changes that brought into line several of the state governorships, which used to be staggered equally across the six year presidential term. governorshipsine are being held on the same day as the presidential election. why does this matter? it matters because it is cheaper. it is good because it should bring more precipitation -- more participation because people are interested in presidential elections and slightly less interested in gubernatorial elections. voterhould bring up participation, which is good in a democracy, particularly a new one. the problem, and i don't think the party leaders thought of this at the time -- when you hold gubernatorial elections at the same time as a presidential election, it may be you have a good estate candidate for your party but a terrible presidential candidate. what this can mean is that you

as an otherwise good candidate can lose the election because of presidential coattails. this is what we may expect. obviously in gubernatorial elections, state party matters, state politics matters a great deal, and so do candidates. what we see here is something new. this is morena. morena, as both my colleagues have mentioned, is a relatively new party. it was formed by lopez obrador embers,from the dying as i like to call it, of the prd. partyd was a unified left from its formation in 1989 right after the 1988 elections. it survived as a unified left

option until basically the creation of a new party under 2012,hat began in continued somewhat in 2015, and finally separated. he finally left the party and took out this new label, morena. so it is the party of regeneration. what you have here is this new party is about to win -- these are the four states it will definitely win, if the polls are correct. sometimes that can be a big if in mexico, but let's assume these are correct. we have the seven state of chiapas, mexico city with almost 9 million voters, tabasco, and morelos. what is interesting is that in many of these states, they used to be governed by one of the three big parties.

in mexico city, this was a prd bastion since it first had elections in 1977. and mexico city with all those millions of voters and nice money became a prd bastion. that is no longer going to be the case. is goingose amlo ally to win that election with little difficulty. tabasco was always being fought between the pri and purity. this is -- and prd. this is why the southeastern states jorge was talking about where there is bipartisan i ism. finally the prd managed to win the last election in 2012, i guess, under a former politician who became a prd politician. he was a terrible governor.

this helps explain, both in terms of corruption scandals and in terms of homicidal rates. just a very bad governor. what you see is the morena candidate is going to win in this state. los, you have more perhaps the saddest story. this was a pan bastion from 2000 on, where the pan could put any candidate it wanted and that candidate would win. this, athe prd wins very happy occasion for them. government, a bad governor. what happens? nco, he was a football star for america, which is like maybe the dallas cowboys of the football teams.

blanco is going to be the future governor of a major state. morelos is relatively small, but very important in many ways. why? you see something very similar. the pan did not do a great job, the purity did even worse -- city prd. did even worse finally you have morena moving in and taking advantage of bad government and the lopez obrador name and the incredible power he has over voters. pan currently holds either 32 state1 -- there are governorships, including mexico city. pan holds about nine, which is a very high number for them. however, of these nine governorships, it will lose probably all but 123.

two are too tight to be able to one, whicht for this has been since 1995 a pan bastion. but there were lots of pan bastion's in 1995 and this is the only one left. so it has lost a lot of states where it used to win and this is the only one left. this is its only hope to outright win estate. this is not good for the pan. inisco is where the pan won 1995 and it was a huge deal because it is a big, rich state with voters and resources. this was also a pan bastion until the last election in 2012. finally a pri member took it

back. he was not considered to be a terrible governor. however, for whatever reason, the pan is basically out of the running in jalisco. pri is far in second place and can't win. aljaro will win the vimientor the mo ciudadano, which is a very small party somewhat fringey, and they are able to win one of the largest states in the republic. yucatán is one of the largest states where the pri actually has a chance. it is not 10 points ahead, seven points ahead, it is locked into a 1-2 battle with the pan.

this is the one state the pri can win. the pri as of now is out of contention in the rest of these states. uebla mexicoa city, these are all very large states, above 5 million people. the rest are moderate states with about 2 million voters. what does this mean? this means pri is losing its voter base. and is a very difficult dangerous position for the once hegemonic party, the party that came back in 2012 out of nowhere and beat everyone. now it is out of contention in these governorships, where it once held sway. all right. the pan could still win two more states. veracruz, very large, puebla,

very large. it is locked in a battle with morena candidate. the morena party could also win two more states, depends how the chips fall. this is interesting because yunes is a former priest. that name again, because it is his son running against a morena candidate. we will see how that comes out, puebla. alonso is the wife of the former pan governor who is a former priest. these parties have lost the ability to attract new talent and there is something very talent and there is something nation ofpt in the mexico which is where you are not pulling in new talent. reusing old talent as in barbosa, anmiguel

old-time p.r.d. leader, like old-time corrupt good natured politician, right? way the weather is turning, he jumps to morena and he's almost able to beat out the governor.e former all right, so what are the trends? a bunch of states and i understand it's not too clear. let's talk about trends. bad for all the parties except for morena. however, morena, you can call the mexican party system through 2015, because i think it's going to change as eric was talking about, basically was, it was a with a bunchystem of little guys and then it became a two of-party system, two large parties, two medium parties.

the medium parties being the and morena. and what could happen in terms makes anorships which huge difference also in terms of congressional elections down the pike is that morena's doing very largend the three traditional parties are doing very poorly. matter forhis anything but those state elections? basically, as i've argued in work that i've done is theirovernors help co-partisan candidates win elections. the best ones to do this are the pregovernors, without a doubt. this part of their job to help deputies and senators win their elections because that's my job. legally, semi legally or illegally, that's my job. now, the p.r.d. and the p.a.n. are not as good at it because of

factional problems but they help their co-partisans overall. whenhat is going to happen you don't have a governor to you? what does that mean in terms of winning future elections both at and federal level? it means it will be much more difficult for you to do so as a from one of the old traditional parties so this is why it's going to matter dramatically how the lower house and the senate come out, no matter who wins the presidency i'm making an even stronger argument for the importance of elections.tive they matter for the future and they're going to matter even majorhen the three parties, traditionally speaking, the governorships. so looks like everything's great for pollenna. morena's what is called in the trade a personal electricoral vehicle.

i. e., it's not really a party such, it's something amlo created because he didn't like the rest of the p.r.d. and they wouldn't give him his lead. so the question becomes, a very question towards the future, is what is going to longerwhen amlo is no politically active? and we were speaking at lunch healthy,ther he's whether he's not so healthy, whether his heart is going to hold out, et cetera. is, there's non doubt, let's say he makes it perfectly well through the six-year sex secteniel. then he leaves after six years and then what happens to the party that's expected to win 50% lower half of congress and even a greater percentage of the senate? will this party survive the exit

from politics of its leader? say, mr., you leave politics after six years. but what will he be, 72, 74? his ability to influence politics definitely goes down with age. so what do these results mean system?mexican party in terms of state populations, i'm going to show you data about how many voters are going to governors,morena p.r.i. governors, p.a.n. governors, from the new election and we'll see morena does extremely well. terms of ine money, the electoral institute that gives out money for campaign finance. so the money comes from ine.

does ine determine the money? through the results of the lower house of congress so if you do poorly in the lower house of congress, your national party gets less money from is public institution, which a bad thing. in terms of midterm elections, we've spoken about this. combines with re-election. what we don't know is what is going to happen to all these morena candidates. you have to be renominated by the same party because the politicians in mexico are geniuses and they know how to stupid electoral rules so just so the parties don't lose control over their candidates, going to force them to be renominated by the same party. break apartobably cycleseveral electoral but for now you're going to see a certain amount of power from candidates just because of re-election. theeally, the morena,

governors elections aligned with the presidential elections, with amlo, could not have come at a worse time because this will be these candidates leak -- elected in 2008 will be able to stand for re-election in 2021 so this is what is such an odd moment that aligned. have so the next question is, we've asked a question about amlo and morena. now i'm going to ask a question about the p.r.i. it winsi., let's assume yucatan, it loses jalisco, it stand at roughly 13 states. the problem for the p.r.i. is are far smaller states. the only state left in this lots of big powerful, numbers, lots of money, is the state of mexico with about 17 million voters. electionst lost that and the question will be, what's going to happen in that state's

midterm elections, which will happen, i think, in a year and a two years. how can the p.r.i. survive if it governors? in 2000, the p.r.i. didn't fall apart, as many expected it to. why? because it held between 19 and governorships, 19 and 21 states out of 32, including all the largest states. that meant was that when the p.r.i. governors saw local and federal elections come up, they helped their candidates. this will no longer happen in at of those 21 states it held. now, is the -- dead? this is so mean. let me show you what i put up in 2012 when i came to the wilson center to give a talk right after the elections. this is what i said. is a badhis, this thing -- this doesn't work. it sort of doesn't work.

was at the p.r.i., this 2012. so look at the p.r.i. circumscriptions, these are like multimember districts. the different regions that jorge was talking about in his talk. the northwest in which is wealthier, where the p.a.n. has governors, they did ok. the p.a.n. did well in the northeast each though its presidential candidate lost, still did pretty well and then they did badly in the southeast, what mexico city used be called and mexico state and the p.r.i. does well except for mexico the -- ate all of that. p.r.d. literally won no majority districts in these regions. each region holds about three to five states.

not a single majority seat in the lower house of two regions.hese and then it only did well in the fourth region which is where mexico city used to be, or is. guess what, now mexico city is longer a p.r.d. bastion. so what's going to happen to 41 districts that it was amlo as an under presidential candidate? it's going to disappear. party, is ons a its way out. now, it's still being held up alliance withn an the p.a.n., the presidential governors,then some some states. however, this is a short-term alliance. the p.r.d. are on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. like a normal, natural alliance. this was an anti-amlo alliance that has not done very well. so we need to start worrying

p.r.d. as a party, as well. of then these are sort population gains. if morena is at the top, if it puebla but not veracruz, it will win basically 25 million voters. the only sense that they will be governor.er a morena if the p.r.i. wins yucatan, then will have two million voters these voters in this election cycle. veracruz and wins guanajuato, 14 million. morena -- is jalisco at eight million. a note here. up on if we don't have governors from major parties able to anymore or fewer

than normal, what will happen to the mexican party system? the party problems is system, despite all of the problems with the parties and party leadership, they have been maintain over 90% of votes and seats up until i think 2015 and then fell to 80 but if eric is correct and it falls to drop-off in a huge large party ownership over majority districts. so who cares? why could that be a problem? i have a colleague who's an economist and he's all for is good. well, in fact, what are you choosing? choosing the candidate or for the alliance? do you been this morena candidate? who knows? p.t.? like the who knows. a bunch of small parties that in

not represent ideologically speaking many voters. if their numbers rise and the numbers fall,rty we could be looking at basically, i wouldn't say the the mexican of party system, but a dramatic weakening of the traditional parties. thank you very much. [applause] duncan: thank you, joy. well, a few presentations that really do bear out the title of this event, there is going to be an historic vote. thank you, all three of you. i'm going to pose three questions, one to each you, then open it up for questions from the audience. the first one, jorge, for you, i wonder if you could talk a bit about the undecideds, votersficant number of who haven't decided yet and how you think it will p.a.n. out or out or morena out in the election on sunday? ask you,i was going to what happened to the p.r.i. but you answered that question.

question,to ask this do you see it is likely that morena could win a majority of legislators by 2021 a mide that's a key date, 2021 andlection in will nots said he attempt a mandate. eric, joy for you, talked about the end of the p.r.i. how do you see the p.r.i. behaving in congress with this greatly reduced position? mass desertiona from the p.r.i. or from other parties, as well, if you like, point? jorge? -- jorge: good that you mentioned the undecided. is a lot of debate in mexico about what it means not to answer the question about and let'spreference

the proper term is people who do not declare an preference. the media sometimes confuse with undecided but term is the precise item nonresponse, that is people question and the it becomes a black box that says that that includes people who say, well, i haven't made up my mind, but we also have people that say, none of these candidates, i'm not going to secret.e vote is so when you look at, for 20% which do not give us an answer to the electoral could say eight

percentage points of the electorate are undecided in the classical sense but the thing is them are undecided on many other issues. they don't give us an opinion about theparties, candidates. i would say this is people that alienated from the political system and actually are not going to vote. expect that things because of these 20% of people that say that -- an answer tos electoral preference question. haveon the other hand, we some other items in the polls which say, have you made up your mind, or is it possible that you your electoral preference? sense we see half, about 30% of the electorate, uncertain.ll they you have an electoral

not a verybut it's solid electoral preference. when you look at the profile of usee that they don't like the p.r.i. they are torn between lopez obrador and ricardo anaya but i that theyany evidence could change dramatically the figures we've already seen in the polls. duncan: thank you. silent button. a on the side there, if you'd like to use that. joy? joy: keep on yelling at them because i need to count one more thing. duncan: got it? joy: i got it. andk like a bunny i went looked up the answer to your question and what is interesting here is that as go the thernorships, so go

majority and the state it's odd to have a p.a.n. governor and p.r.i. majority or a p.a.n. governor have a p.a.n. majority in the state legislature so not always ifbut you have a strong governor, you inl also have a majority your state assembly. now, this matters as duncan because in order to change the constitution, you send that piece of legislation not only through a majority of the house and conditioning -- congress but also a super majority of the state so the state legislatures vote on that constitutional changing piece of legislation which would be very difficult for amlo or lopez obrador to do have,e he would only let's say, five to six states, so he wouldn't be able to get any sort of super majority of the state

congresses. what obviously matter is whether governors would be able to negotiate or would be willing with the lopez obrador presidency. now, it may be for certain know, you would change the constitution. is what really matters here whether you're sort of willing to become, as i like to say, you know, amlo is not going to be another chavez. mexico won't be another venezuela. but mexico, you know, could potentially become another philippines, right, with weak and with very strong presidency. i'm not saying that lopez obrador is an authoritarian or i'm simply saying if you have weaker parties, you can expect stronger presidents and latin american case, that's a bad thing.

to answer your question, i would no, i don't see any hope of morena winning anything a majority of state legislatures in the short term. duncan: 2021? joy: no, that's pretty short term. duncan: thank you. eric? eric: thank you. well, just to make some counter to what joy just said because you're asking about p.r.i. slate in congress. we're talking about the kings of pragmatism and mostly kings, i guess, but basically been non-ideological since they were born. what will happen? i think the answer passes through joy's question because pivotal inave been legislative careers in mexico democratic erain and what will happen with all deputies.i. federal and governors when mexico will

strapped, ish guess, in the coming few years, economy's world slow-down, the end of nafta and they will bes and having a hard time getting -- mexican governments -- state funded by thee federation so you need good connections to get money for your states and it's not likely that these remnants of p.r.i. and play their pragmatism actually join morena eagerly so maybe that actually might change was saying. majoritiest have elected on their own but might inherit pieces of the p.r.i. knows. duncan: questions from the audience? one right here, one at the back there. up front, thank you. if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself. viar,course, blake i

department of justice. i have two questions unrelated. relation to bemex as they are diversifybecome -- and become more competitive at least in the american oil south, whath and obradorimplications if wins for pemex. second question, coincidentally, this is timed with the turkish presidential election and i'm wondering if mexico can expect of votinghreats irregularities that have been quote/unquote democracies in other parts of the world going on at the same time. you. duncan: question from the gentleman at the back. brian uling. couldestions, as well,

someone please provide a quick illustration of what the typical is in arnout presidential election in mexico lookedt the trends have like recently and how you think that might be playing out going into the future in general. the second question is, if i correctly, the new administration takes office on the first of december. could you provide some hint as one might anticipate seeing people identified for key of authority, et cetera, and how that might play out? excellentank you, questions. do we have a third? yes, please. john suarez, freedom house. amlo wins, is, if what consequences would it be for the relationship between the regioncuba and at large? duncan: thank you. who would like to lead off? jorge? jorge: start with the turnout

question. the past, presidential turnout has been if i'm not 66%, figures was 66%. we should expect, as joy was there should be an increase in turnout because of concurrent elections. now, this is something we didn't 32tion, that 30 out of the states will have local elections july 1. in the past, 12 years ago, we an increase in turnout -- states with concurrent elections a turnout rate four percentage points higher than the rest of the country. given this, we should expect in this election to be around 70%.

something that it's very important to keep in mind, it is the u.s., electoral show anyion do not bias or partisan bias. for instance, in the u.s., you have minorities that are underrepresented in the electoral roll because of difficulties with registration. electoral part of the history is that there was not a partisan bias in the we don'tion process so see that many differences in electoral results because of turnout. so this is going to be an election where a lot of people are going to turn out and i a majorpect these to be explanation if things do not go expected by -- as predicted by the polls. irregularities, i was just looking this morning

the parties representatives at the voting booths. we are going to have about installedlling booths in mexico on july 1 and it seems will havea has -- representatives at about 90% of booths and numbers similar to the p.r.i., and at p.a.n. and thehe p.r.d. will have also a major presence in the polling booths so this is going to be a closely ofched election in terms the -- of party representatives to keep another thing the authorities of the polling booths, that is officials, the people who count votes, are citizens randomly nationalby the electoral institute so that's another guard against the

fraud.lity of and i think the question about pamex, you are the best one to answer it. if you don't mind, on the topic -- more electronic? jorge: it's all paper ballot. the i would like to answer irregularity question. i think it's important to know the irregularities are going to happen during the not so much on, why, because vote stealing, which is what the wasi. used to do in part, replaced by vote buying, in large part. buying is happening as we speak. it's going on for the last

month, right? buying, it's not 100% effective. there are many problems for the try to buythey people's votes. it's not a perfect system. and so it remains to be seen bether the vote buying will enough for certain states, certain state legislatures, et cetera. and the second thing is, in of irregularities, it's for ena,icult electoral authority, fiscally on,k as the campaign goes how much illegal spending is being done. extremelykes it difficult. byre was a study done integrallia a couple of years each votethey thought for what it officially cost it was something on the order of

andto three times more that's just the federal deputies, not even the presidency. but i think most importantly, something we really haven't mentioned very much, which is in of -- various regions of mexico, the narco, the drug trade organizations, criminal drug trade organizations, have been very active in making their preferences for certain known and how do they do that? by murdering them or trying murder them. is a real issue when you're speaking of -- i've heard both the 120 figure for longer for i of time versus 45 think the actual campaign period or something like that. that means is, is that it's not that those candidates left alive in those municipalities are

necessarily pro narco, but it means they're certainly not anti-narco. that they're on the right, they're on the side group that's strongest in that area. basically we don't really know that much. would argue that in terms of comparing mexico to turkey, i probably a lot different. however, there is voting just not in the sense of vote stealing. >> eric: i'd like to take the cabinet question. there are two big differences mexico and the u.s. at least. first is that there's a five-month period between the election and inauguration and i think that would be a world in waiting. so there's times to negotiate during that time. the other difference is that

there's few cabinet posts that need congressional confirmation so they basically can be appointed right off. said, i think we should have a full cabinet basically on 3.ember 2 or that's basically how it's worked in mexico. cuba and u.s.,of but not really my area. i would add one thing, there is lots of vote-buying. every party participates. his earlier elections have in stolen from -- by fraud and there is no evidence of that. theyarties participate and are knowledge other. that is my take on it. video going around on social media, mexican voters being told to accept the money in exchange for buying the vote

but to go into the polling booth, mark the choice to take a photograph of it and put a v on it will -- that will indicate it has been sold. you will be -- give an idea who is buying votes afterwards. it was a pragmatic approach. whether or not people will do that, i do not know. seeink we are likely to freezing to the oil contract, not the ones already issued. but no new oil auctions, there will be a focus on pemex. he either does that by further in getting the government or pemex and their limitations to that. there will be a significant amount of tinkering around the edges of regulation and secondary legislation as well. on cuba, i do not think we have anyone here who will answer your question.

i do not think he was interested in foreign policy. he is not particularly interested in the ball of area and revolution. there are people who spent a lot of time in venezuela, and continue to associate with folks from the madura regime. at least recently has been disciplined, he refuses to the revolution but he also does not speak in favor of it. his attitude to cuba may be similar. he will be pragmatic create what will cuba give him? not really so much to a country like mexico. perhaps that is an unformed opinion. next speakers.e

if you could be as quick as possible. a few weeks ago, we had here ofshe spoke about the risks considering the result of the election. she said all the polls have obviously been telling us for many that he is to win but she aid you do not think of it as done deal. she left a big question whether that was going to be the case. thestarted the issue of undecided vote. or he mentioned some of that. you think the deal that he is winning on sunday and there is no way around? my question is about nafta

negotiations, if the panel could could mean inhat terms of the substance and timing. substantivend changes and if not, would we see a break along -- a break my a long break while his team gets into place? >> last question. >> i was wondering if the panel could address the pef. they gave up quite a lot of spaces for them in order to have this coalition. what kind of policies could they be looking at having to work on with these two groups? >> thank you. i think the chances he loses the election are very slim.

you have [indiscernible] narrow.nsiders is considered [indiscernible] and 99%. it can happen, yes, is it likely, it is not likely. options of the pt and pef. the smaller parties are not known for their demands or promises. these are not what you would giveand ideologically and party. what they tend to be especially pt, they tend to be parties that the resourcey

incentives, the monetary they give toat existing parties. these are not normally seen as policy powerhouses. they do not give many ideas. an only question is pef as evangelical party. i do not think mexico is a very evangelical country. it is becoming far less religious rather than more and i do not the a very small party changes that in the near future. thank you. >> they would start with the smaller parties positions, they oriented not policy area there is one instance in that raises more doubts than answers, the green party.

allied with the pra for 15 years if not more. they have, if you think about the german liberals, they are a tiny party that allies with other parties and 10 to make party demands systematically. they play the government role. have, they want one governorship in chiapas. they have not demanded more. i am not sure if the new party will behave the same way and basically get money or something else. can behe done deal, we sure, the presidential race is hard to turn around. there is more uncertainty about the other races. campaign very unlikely at least in the mexican recent tradition where there is very changed froman be

here to nexen day. -- two next sunday. sunday. has moderated his position and recognizes that nafta has been good for mexico but it needs to be improved. he believes he should be the one to improve it. his dream situation would have in that it was wrapped up before he came into office. be difficult. he has said he will accept whatever the current negotiating team has negotiated up to this point and he respects the work they have done and he has picked the chief negotiator who is a recognized and respected economist. minister,or economy he is a respected economist as well. left leaning but orthodox. howhould expect that given

important he is for mexico's prosperity he would try to save nafta if he could. thank you for being with us. thanks to our participants. [applause]