2012 Mexico Presidential Election

Enrique Peña Nieto (2010)

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2011)

In the 2012 presidential election in Mexico on July 1, 2012 , Enrique Peña Nieto ( PRI ), Josefina Vázquez Mota ( PAN ), Andrés Manuel López Obrador ( PRD ) and Gabriel Quadri de la Torre (Nueva Alianza, PANAL) competed against each other. The candidate with the most votes was elected for the one-time term of office from 2012 to 2018. A second ballot was not planned.

According to the preliminary final result, Enrique Peña Nieto won the election with 38.15 percent of the vote. López Obrador, who came in second, then filed a complaint with the National Electoral Authority, IFE, because the election had resulted in several breaches of the constitution and the opposing side bought votes on a large scale. The electoral authority then announced on July 4, 2012 that the ballot papers from 54.5 percent of the urns would be counted again. The recount did not change the result and Peña Nieto was almost seven percentage points ahead of López Obrador. The PRD politician had demanded a complete recount and stated that there were “inconsistencies” in more than 113,000 of the 143,000 ballot boxes. On August 31, 2012, the Mexican Supreme Electoral Court declared Enrique Peña Nieto as elected president and rejected the defeated López Obrador's call for the election to be annulled.

At the same time as the presidential election, 300 deputies and 128 senators were elected to the Mexican parliament. At the state level, 6 governors and 13 regional parliaments and approximately 400 mayors were also elected.

Election campaign

The favorite to succeed Felipe Calderón was Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI). According to various opinion polls in spring 2012, he was able to count on an average of 47% of all votes. Josefina Vázquez Mota from the incumbent ruling party PAN had a share of 27% and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD) 24%. Leaving behind with 2% of the vote, Gabriel Quadri de la Torre (PANAL) was in last position.

The main topics in the election campaign were the weak economy and the acute crisis of internal security, especially the fight against organized crime ( drug war in Mexico ), which had led to a deterioration in the quality of life.

The election campaign officially began on March 30, 2012. A first televised debate with the presidential candidates took place on May 6, 2012. From mid-May 2012 there were demonstrations by students from private and public universities. They accused newspapers and television stations (especially Televisa and TV Azteca ) of favoring candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and the PRI in their coverage of the upcoming presidential election.

Result

States won: Peña Nieto (green), Obrador (yellow) and Vázquez Mota (blue)

Preliminary final result:

candidate	Result
	be right	percent
Enrique Peña Nieto ( PRI )	18,727,398	38.15
Andrés Manuel López Obrador ( PRD )	15,535,117	31.64
Josefina Vázquez Mota ( PAN )	12.473.106	25.40
Gabriel Quadri de la Torre (Nueva Alianza, PANAL)	1,129,108	2.30
Unregistered candidates	31,660	0.06
Invalid votes	1,191,057	2.42
total	49,087,446	100.00

Web links

Commons : Mexico Presidential Election 2012  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Rocio Bravo Salazar: Before the elections in Mexico: return of the PRI to power? , Ibero analyzes, issue 24, May 2012 (PDF, 742 KiB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Election result in Mexico: Left-wing politician Obrador wants to contest election result at focus.de, July 3, 2012 (accessed on July 3, 2012).
2. ↑ Mexico: Recount confirms Peña Nieto's election victory at zeit.de, July 6, 2012 (accessed on July 8, 2012).
3. ↑ Election of the President in Mexico: Half of all ballot papers are counted anew at focus.de, July 5, 2012 (accessed on July 5, 2012).
4. ^ Matthias Knecht: Decision of the electoral court: Peña Nieto in Mexico confirmed. NZZ Online, September 1, 2012, accessed on September 1, 2012 . 
5. ^ ^{A b c} Rocio Bravo Salazar: Before the elections in Mexico: return of the PRI to power. (No longer available online.) Ibero-Analyzes, May 2012, formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 3, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
6. ^ Matthias Knecht: Mexico's election campaign in the shadow of violence. NZZ Online, May 15, 2012, accessed on June 3, 2012 . 
7. ↑ Appearance in the TV debate. Model steals the show from politicians. SpiegelOnline, May 8, 2012, accessed June 3, 2012 . 
8. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Vogel: Student protests in Mexico. “Yo soy 132” stirs up the election campaign. taz.de, May 31, 2012, accessed June 3, 2012 . 
9. ↑ Preliminary final result ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at prep2012.excelsior.com.mx, accessed July 3, 2012.