98.45% of Polling Stations Tallied, Difference of One Percentage Point between Calderón and Obrador
by Alonso Urrutia, Fabiola Martínez, and Jesús Aranda

* Electoral collapse of Madrazo
* Publish the IFE [Federal Electoral Institute] archive of inconsistencies
* 2,017 polling stations remain, which means 1,111,350 potential votes

Counting 98.45 percent of the polling stations for the Mexican presidential election, the Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) showed that the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, already received the total of 14,027,214 votes, equivalent to 36.38 percent, which implied exactly a 1.04 percent advantage over the standard bearer of the For the Good of All coalition, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had 13,624,506 votes, 35.34 percent of the total.

Notwithstanding these results, 2,017 polling stations have yet to be counted, which means a universe of 1,111,350 potential votes, although based on the voter participation rate, reportedly 58.90 percent, it would mean about 660,000 effective votes. The distance between the leading candidates was 403,708 votes, in favor of the PAN candidate, according to the last count of the PREP.

Nevertheless, given the officially recognized voter participation rate -- 58.90 percent -- and the registered voter list of 71,350,976 citizens, 42,025,724 citizens must have participated, the number that contrasts with 38,549,351 votes reported by the PREP, which include null votes and votes for unregistered candidates. Taking the estimated 660,000 remaining votes into consideration, the total is 39,020,351, which yields a difference of 2,816,373 votes that would appear neither in the PREP nor in the remaining polling stations, all based on official data.

At night, the IFE proceeded to justify the contradictions in the numbers, by means of a bulletin which announced the existence of an unexpected subsystem called "archive of inconsistencies," in which the official documents of vote counts and election results that have presented inconsistencies are consigned. According to the institute, to ensure clarity and to avoid distortions, this archive is not integrated into the results that are made public.

The candidate whose fortune plummeted in this election, relative to historical trends -- according to the closing report of the PREP -- was the candidate of the Alliance for Mexico, Roberto Madrazo Pintado, who took 8,318,886 votes, that is to say, 21.57 percent of the votes counted. For her part, Patricia Mercado, of Social Democratic and Farmer Alternative, obtained the showing that secured registration to her party, with 1,085,966 votes, equivalent to 2,81 percent; finally, Roberto Campa, of New Alliance, obtained only 384,317 votes, barely 0.99 percent of the total.

Overlap

In the development of collected data so far, two aspects stand out: the paradoxical fact that, in such a close election, there never was a moment in the flow of information when Calderón appeared trailing Obrador, unlike what has commonly happened in equally tight state elections, where switches between the first and second places are normal. This tendency is even in contradiction to the report of the quick count, which showed in the first hours "an overlap" between the leading candidates.

Another striking fact is 827,617 null votes, since they represent 2.14 percent of the total of valid, null, and blank votes -- more than double the votes that maintained Calderón's advantage over López Obrador.

Also, in the case of Campa and New Alliance, electoral behavior was strange and hinted at compromises by the enormous difference between 384,317 votes for the New Alliance presidential candidate and 1,624,120 votes for the party in the Senate election, the latter being equivalent to 4.14 percent, according to the PREP.

The state-by-state results were unchanged from the trends that were already anticipated last Sunday: Calderón and the López Obrador had each gained 16, leaving Madrazo without any state victory, the defeat aggravated by the fact that he got only 8.55 percent of the votes in the capital of the country.

Even among the six states in which 45 percent of registered voters are concentrated, there was an even distribution, too, because the For the Good of All coalition gained the Federal District, the state of México, and Veracruz, whereas Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Puebla went for Calderón. Although the left coalition won the three states with the largest numbers of registered voters, in the aforementioned three states, the PAN recorded huge numbers of votes, unlike what happened in the other states that the PAN won, since the left coalition went down to the third place in Jalisco and Guanajuato.

As for the Alliance for Mexico, it bears emphasis that it not only lost in all the states but came in third in the nine states where it is the governing party today, including its historical bastions like Hidalgo, Campeche, the state of México (the land of Arturo Montiel), Puebla (governed by the controversial Mario Marín), Quintana Roo, Sinaloa, Sonora (under the government of Eduardo Bours, one of the governors who are most critical of Roberto Madrazo), Tamaulipas, and Veracruz.

According to the PREP, the definitive voter participation rate in the elections this Sunday was 58.90 percent, below the two previous ones that elected the PRI's Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León and the PAN's Vicente Fox Quesada.

It is striking that two states with the highest voter participation have been won by López Obrador: the Federal District, which reported that 68.8 percent went to the ballot boxes, and Tabasco, with 68.37 percent, are also notable for the amplest percentage margins in the country, because in the capital the PRD candidate obtained 58.13 percent of votes and in Tabasco, of which he is a native son, he rose to 56.11 percent, almost 20 percentage points above his fellow Tabasqueño Madrazo Pintado, who attained 37 percent.

The Federal District was also the one that reported the greatest number of votes for López Obrador in absolute terms, with 2,726,705 votes, more than 2,368,556 votes that he obtained in the state of México. The votes of these two states alone were 5,095,281, about one third of the total votes for López Obrador at national level.

Another noteworthy fact in the electoral showing of the For the Good of All coalition is that López Obrador did, on average, 6 percentage points better than the left coalition in the elections for deputies and senators. The PAN candidate, for his part, did 3 percentage points better than his party.

Votes by State

Of the 14,027,214 votes that Calderón had, the states that contributed to him most in absolute terms were the state of México, with 1,709,909; Jalisco, 1,367,944; the Federal District, 1,282,217, and Guanajuato, with 1,090,696.

Nevertheless, this last state - from which President Vicente Fox hails -- handed out, in terms of percentage, the greatest dividends to the PAN: 59.9 percent, 23 percentage points above its national average.

Only in another state Calderón managed to surpass the 50 percent threshold, Sonora, the state governed by the PRI's Eduardo Bours, who was openly confrontational toward Madrazo. The other states where the PAN enjoyed the greatest percentage advantages were Nuevo León, with 49.23 percent; Querétaro, 49.25 percent, and Jalisco, 49.39 percent.

The situation is different in the case of the Alliance for Mexico, highlighting the poor performance of Madrazo in the capital of the country, where he barely reached 8.59 percent, with 401,061 votes. The other states that were electoral disasters for the PRI candidate in terms of percentage were Tlaxcala, where he reached just 14.52 percent; Morelos, 15.63 percent, and Baja California Sur, with 16.58 percent, all much below his national average of 21.57 percent .

Paradoxically, the state that reported the most votes for Madrazo in absolute terms was the state of México, where he received 989,786 votes, but ironically, in the emblematic state where a year ago the PRI defeated the opposition 2 to 1 in one of the most important gubernatorial races of the country, Madrazo came in third.

Veracruz was another state that reported numerous votes for Madrazo, 649,375, but, like the state of México, it did not serve him more than to confirm the third place at national level. In Jalisco, he got 665,953 votes, and in Nuevo León, 463,936. Another significant state was Baja California Sur, where the Tabasqueño politician gathered only 27,125 votes.