MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – Mexico’s ruling party comfortably captured a major historic stronghold of the opposition in an election on Sunday, consolidating President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s hold on power ahead of the battle to succeed him next year.
Lopez Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) won the State of Mexico gubernatorial contest by more than 8 percentage points, according to preliminary results from the state’s electoral institute.
The victory adds Mexico’s most populous region to the 21 other states MORENA already controls, now more than two-thirds of the total. Another state is governed by a group allied to MORENA, giving the party a huge power base heading into the presidential elections due to be held on June 2, 2024.
Sunday’s result also consigned Mexico’s erstwhile political powerhouse, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), to a new nadir, marking another milestone in its replacement by MORENA as the country’s establishment party.
The centrist PRI has governed the State of Mexico since 1929, the date from which it began its long domination of Mexico. Over time, it became a byword for corruption for many Mexicans. Defeated for the presidency in 2000, it bounced back in 2012 but was drubbed by Lopez Obrador six years later.
“We defeated corruption and neglect,” MORENA’s triumphant candidate Delfina Gomez told cheering supporters after the vote, hailing the PRI’s ouster. “For the first time, we’ll have a government serving those who are most vulnerable.”
Gomez, who narrowly lost the previous state election, will be the State of Mexico’s first female governor.
