International Election Digest: As Brexit looms, UK calls new elections that Tories will likely win

Daily Kos Elections International for Daily Kos Elections

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday November 17, 2019 · 6:00 AM PST

2019/11/17 · 06:00

no image description available — United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson

^{The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by Stephen Wolf and David Beard, with additional contributions from James Lambert and Daniel Donner, and is edited by David Nir.}

Note: This is the final edition of the Daily Kos International Elections Digest. We will continue to cover major overseas elections in our flagship newsletter, the Morning Digest, which you can sign up for here. We thank you for reading us the past three years!

Leading Off

● United Kingdom – parliament (Dec. 12)

After nearly a year of uncertainty over the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union and months of a minority government following the exodus of 21 Conservative MPs from the party in September, the U.K. has finally agreed to hold new elections. This will be the first December election since 1923 for the country, which this time of year experiences very little daylight in its northernmost areas.

Campaign Action

Hardline Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been pressing for an election since September, but he'd been thwarted by the opposition parties and rebel Tory MPs. They feared that he would use the election to force a "no-deal" Brexit, an economically catastrophic move that would reset tariffs between the U.K. and the EU to standard World Trade Organization rates from their current, far more favorable rates. However, once an extension to negotiate a new deal with the EU until Jan. 31 was enacted, the other parties agreed to an election.

Johnson's Conservatives have been consistently ahead in the polls, with leads ranging from high single digits to low double digits depending on the pollster. However, the volatility of voter support in recent years in the U.K. has kept uncertainty high, and it's still quite possible for the Conservatives to fall short of a majority even if they place a comfortable first.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday October 13, 2019 · 6:00 AM PDT

2019/10/13 · 06:00

(L to R) Balad party member and candidate Mtanes Shehadeh raises his hands together with Hadash's chairman and candidate Ayman Odeh, Arab Movement for Change (Taal) leader and candidate Ahmad Tibi, and Hadash's member and candidate Aida Touma before supporters at the alliance's campaign headquarters in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth on September 17, 2019, as the first exit polls are announced on television. - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main challenger Benny Gantz were neck-and-neck in the country's general election after polls closed, exit surveys showed. Three separate exit polls carried by Israeli television stations showed Netanyahu's right-wing Likud and Gantz's centrist Blue and White alliance with between 31 and 34 parliament seats each out of 120. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP) (Photo credit should read AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images) — Joint List leader Ayman Odeh (second from left)

_{The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by Stephen Wolf and David Beard, with additional contributions from James Lambert and Daniel Donner, and is edited by David Nir.}

Leading Off

● Israel – parliament (Sept. 17)

After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unexpectedly failed to form a coalition despite placing first in April's elections, Israel headed back to the polls in September, only to return a Knesset even less able to form a stable majority than the previous one.

Netanyahu's radical-right Likud party and its allies (parties of the far-right and Orthodox Haredi religious parties) won 55 out of 120 seats, down five seats from April, while parties opposed to Netanyahu (centrists, the center-left, and Arab-supported parties) took 57 seats, an increase of two.

The four Arab parties, running collectively as the Joint List, won 13 seats, making them the third-largest bloc after centrist leader Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party, which won 33 seats, and Likud, which took 32. In a historic move, the Arab parties, which have traditionally sat out the post-election coalition-building process, recommended Gantz for PM.

The remaining eight seats went to Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, a right-wing secular party that has sharp disagreements with the Haredi parties over the role of religion in the public sphere. While Lieberman has allied with Netanyahu in the past, he refused to enter into a coalition with the Haredim after the April elections.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday July 28, 2019 · 5:15 AM PDT

2019/07/28 · 05:15

_{The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by Stephen Wolf and David Beard, with additional contributions from James Lambert and Daniel Donner, and is edited by David Nir.}

Leading Off

● United Kingdom – Conservative Party leadership election (June-July)

Boris Johnson comfortably won election to become both the new leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister of the United Kingdom last week, earning 66% of the Tory party membership vote to runner-up Jeremy Hunt's 34% to succeed Theresa May, who announced her resignation in May.

Campaign Action

Upon taking office, Johnson radically overhauled the government, dismissing nearly every Cabinet member who had not supported both Johnson in the leadership election and the concept of a "no-deal" Brexit. The new, much more right-wing ruling coalition will, however, struggle to pass any notable legislation with just a single-digit majority in Parliament, which means new elections are likely within months.

Johnson has repeatedly committed to taking the United Kingdom out of the European Union on the revised date of Oct. 31, with or without a transition agreement. As the European Union has long refused to make major changes to the previously negotiated withdrawal agreement, it's nearly certain that Johnson will attempt to leave the EU without any sort of deal, which would reset tariffs between the U.K. and the EU to standard World Trade Organization rates.

All signs show, though, that Johnson cannot command a majority in favor of a no-deal Brexit: Not only do many Tories strongly oppose it, but lawmakers voted to reject the idea in the form of a nonbinding resolution back in March. However, Parliament may struggle to prevent this hardest of Brexits from taking place. A no-deal Brexit is currently the law, so Johnson may simply be able to run out the clock or evade whatever restrictions Parliament attempts to place on him.

The next steps are easy to predict, though the key outcomes remain in doubt. Johnson will almost certainly try for no deal, which Parliament will in turn attempt to block by forcing Johnson to request another extension from the EU. Whatever happens, though, Johnson will likely call new elections soon after.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday June 02, 2019 · 6:00 AM PDT

2019/06/02 · 06:00

NEW DELHI, INDIA - MAY 23: Narendra Modi acknowledges to the victorious party workers while getting garland at the BJP party head quarters in New Delhi, India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set for another five-year term on Thursday after a landslide victory as over 600 million people voted in a marathon seven-phase general elections which lasted over six-weeks. Supporters of the Hindu nationalist party celebrated in the capital New Delhi as Modi is scheduled to appear at the BJP headquarters and leaders across the world congratulated the Indian Prime Minister for his historic return to power for a second straight term. (Photo by Atul Loke/Getty Images) — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrating his party's victory in this spring's elections

^{The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by Stephen Wolf and David Beard, with additional contributions from James Lambert and Daniel Donner, and is edited by David Nir.}

Leading Off

● India – parliament (April 11-May 19)

Elections in the world's largest democracy saw Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's radical-right Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party win a landslide victory over the center-left Indian National Congress, securing a second term for Modi at the helm of India's first back-to-back majority governments in decades. The BJP expanded its majority and won 65% of the seats with 45% of the vote as part of the National Democratic Alliance, giving Modi strong backing to pursue an increasingly far-right agenda.

Campaign Action

Modi's opponents hoped to force a hung parliament by denying his party or even his coalition a majority, but the BJP and its allies unexpectedly gained seats compared to their already historic 2014 victory. Led by Gandhi family scion Rahul Gandhi, the INC and its United Progressive Alliance of allied parties earned just 26% of the vote and 17% of the seats, with various regional parties taking much of the balance.

India is an ethnically and religiously diverse country, and although Hindus make up roughly 80% of the population, it's also home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations, given the nation's sheer size of 1.3 billion people. Modi and his party espouse a hardline form of Hindu nationalism called Hindutva that targets Muslims for discrimination in particular. Years before Modi became prime minister in 2014, he had once been banned from entering the U.S. for allegedly providing tacit support to Hindu ultranationalists who massacred Muslims in riots in his role as the chief minister of the state of Gujarat in 2002.

While Modi was never prosecuted in that incident, he and his party have fostered a political climate that has emboldened Hindu nationalists, often with violent results. One notable sign of how the BJP has increasingly lost its claim to being a mainstream party was running Sadhvi Pragya Thakur as a candidate. Prosecutors suspect Thakur helped plot a 2008 bomb attack that killed 10 people and wounded 82 others in a heavily Muslim city, yet she still won election.

Modi and the BJP came to power in 2014 in part due to widespread voter dissatisfaction with the long-dominant INC over weakening economic growth and the party's reputation for corruption, but while the BJP passed several business-friendly reforms and welfare proposals to benefit the very poor, economic growth has remained below expectations as unemployment rose. As a result, the BJP's 2019 victory instead appears to have delivered a mandate to Modi to more vigorously pursue his Hindu nationalist agenda both domestically and against Muslim-majority Pakistan. The results may also embolden the BJP to further undermine the independence of the media and judiciary.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday May 05, 2019 · 6:00 AM PDT

2019/05/05 · 06:00

Leading Off

● Spain – parliament (April 28)

Spain's April elections saw the center-left Socialist party win its biggest victory since 2008 after a late surge in the polls, putting it in a strong position to form the next governing coalition and prevent a right-wing coalition from taking power.

Campaign Action

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez took power in 2018 only after the previous right-wing minority government was brought down by regional nationalist and Catalan separatist parties, but those very Catalan separatists who had flipped to the Socialists' side later forced new elections by opposing their budget. Now Sanchez will have a firmer mandate to pursue his agenda with multiple paths to attain a governing majority.

Unlike the previous Socialist minority government, Sanchez's party is now the biggest, controlling 35% of the seats. However, some of the Socialists' gains came from the left-wing Unidas Podemos, which lost a third of its previous support and won just 12% of seats, putting the two natural allies just short of a majority.

Still, the outcome was a major win for Sanchez, since he no longer has to rely on the Catalan separatist parties. Instead, various Basque nationalist parties and other regional nationalist parties could give the Socialists a working majority combined with Podemos.

One potentially appealing option for the Socialists would involve striking a deal with the separatist Republican Left of Catalonia; that party, along with Podemos, would provide a left-of-center majority without the need to rely on any of the right-of-center regionalist parties in the Basque Country and elsewhere. Alternately, while both the Socialists and the center-right Citizens party have publicly ruled out a grand coalition, such an arrangement isn't impossible if the Socialists' negotiations with smaller parties fail.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday April 07, 2019 · 10:09 AM PDT

2019/04/07 · 10:09

Leading Off

● Algeria – presidential resignation

In a political earthquake in North Africa, longtime Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned earlier this month after 20 years in power. The frail 82-year-old's attempt to run for a fifth term had set off massive protests and strikes against corruption and the government's authoritarianism. Protesters, many of whom are young, have been calling for widespread changes to Algeria's system of government, under which the National Liberation Front (FLN) has been in power almost without interruption since the country gained independence from France in 1962.

Campaign Action

The last time Algeria held genuine multiparty elections was in 1991, which saw the Islamic Salvation Front poised to oust the much more secular FLN from power after the first round of voting. The military, however, initiated a coup that canceled the runoffs and annulled the elections, leading to a decade of civil war and the deaths of 100,000 to 200,000 people. With military support, Bouteflika ascended to the presidency in the opposition-boycotted 1999 election, and the FLN and its allies have maintained a chokehold on power ever since.

Although Algeria saw widespread protests when the initial Arab Spring demonstrations swept the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, the political and economic reforms imposed to quell them did little to undermine Bouteflika's grasp on power. That background makes this year's ouster of the president even more remarkable given that the Arab Spring revolutions collapsed in a reversion to authoritarianism or catastrophic civil war everywhere except in neighboring Tunisia.

While elections will likely follow at some undetermined point, it remains to be seen whether they will truly be free and fair. The military still retains significant power, and protesters are demanding far-reaching changes that would threaten its control in this nation of 42 million people.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday March 03, 2019 · 6:00 AM PST

2019/03/03 · 06:00

^{The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by Stephen Wolf and David Beard, with additional contributions from James Lambert and Daniel Donner, and is edited by David Nir.}

Leading Off

● United Kingdom – Independent Group formation

Eleven members of parliament (MPs)—eight from Labour and three from the Conservatives—left their respective parties and intend to set up a new, centrist party. Currently calling themselves the Independent Group (TIG), the defectors primarily cited Brexit, which they oppose and would like to soften or reverse, and the movement of the major parties away from the center and to the left and right. The Labour MPs also cited the party's ongoing struggle with anti-Semitism under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, whom they say has passively allowed the problem to grow more prevalent.

Campaign Action

This is not the first time the British Parliament has seen a split, but the most recent example does not bode well for TIG's prospects. In 1981, four prominent centrist Labour MPs split and formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The SDP eventually gained 29 MPs through defections, 28 from Labour and one from the Conservatives. As the 1983 general election approached, the SDP formed an electoral alliance with the Liberals (the precursor to today's Liberal Democrats), and the alliance managed an impressive 25.4 percent of the vote, only a few points behind second-place Labour.

However, the United Kingdom's first-past-the-post system, like America's, is extremely unforgiving of third parties and the SDP-Liberal Alliance won only 23 seats out of the 650 in Parliament, and only six of those were SDP MPs. After a similar result in 1987, the two parties merged to form the modern Liberal Democrats, all but erasing the SDP from existence. It's hard to see how TIG, currently polling in the low teens, can succeed where the SDP failed.

Nevertheless, even if TIG doesn't succeed in winning seats, its presence on the ballot has the potential to take votes from the major parties, possibly hurting Labour. Apparently feeling the political pressure, Corbyn announced in late February that Labour would finally call for a second referendum to stop or soften Brexit. However, after years of Labour failing to lead against Brexit, the political damage that prompted the TIG split may be too late to reverse.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday January 20, 2019 · 6:00 AM PST

2019/01/20 · 06:00

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a statement to members of the media in Downing Street in London on January 16, 2019, after surviving a vote of no confidence in her government. - British Prime Minister Theresa May's government saw off a vote of no confidence in parliament on Wednesday, called after MPs overwhelmingly rejected the Brexit deal. (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP) (Photo credit should read BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images) — British Prime Minister Theresa May

^{The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by Stephen Wolf and David Beard, with additional contributions from James Lambert and Daniel Donner, and is edited by David Nir.}

NB: Please be sure to check our calendar of international elections coming up in 2019 at the bottom of this post!

Leading Off

● United Kingdom – Brexit

Brexit has plunged the United Kingdom into deep turmoil, and no one knows how it will emerge. Below, we'll explore why the world's fifth-largest economy is mired in this fix, and what might happen next.

Campaign Action

Matters reached an ugly crescendo this week when Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's "Brexit" deal—the U.K.'s transitional agreement with the European Union (EU) to leave the supranational union—went down to defeat in Parliament by a vote of 202-432 on Tuesday, the biggest loss for a motion put forward by a sitting British government in over 100 years. This in turn led to a vote of no confidence, which May and her Tories survived in spite of their humiliating failure a day earlier, winning 325-306 with the help of their allies, Northern Ireland's right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Combined, these two votes kept the status quo in place, with May’s government surviving but also with no feasible deal to leave the EU capable of winning a parliamentary majority. But the clock is ticking: Brexit is currently scheduled to happen on March 29, with or without a deal. A "No Deal" or "hard" Brexit, where all trade between the U.K. and EU reverts to World Trade Organization (WTO) terms, would be the worst-case outcome for both the U.K. and the union, but hardline anti-Europe extremists nonetheless embrace the possibility.

How did the United Kingdom get stuck in this situation, careening towards a no-deal scenario that almost no one wants? There’s an epic quantum of blame to go around, and heaps of fault lie with former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, who allowed the referendum in the first place, and Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was never able to articulate a clear stance against it, among many others (including Vladimir Putin).

But in terms of the morass the UK is in right now—that is to say, the government’s utter inability to come up with any sort of viable way for dealing with Brexit—there are four main players you can point a finger at. We’ll start with the most obvious: the prime minister herself.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday November 18, 2018 · 6:00 AM PST

2018/11/18 · 06:00

Leading Off

● Brazil – president (Oct. 28)

In a catastrophic outcome for the world's fourth-largest democracy, far-right former Army Capt. Jair Bolsonaro defeated leftist Fernando Haddad by 55-45 in the runoff to become Brazil's next president. Bolsonaro can rightly be called a fascist: He is an open admirer of Brazil's right-wing military dictatorship that brutally suppressed the opposition from 1964 to 1985 and claims the junta's failure was that it didn't kill enough people. His victory has sparked grave fears that he will attempt to dismantle Brazil's struggling three-decade-old democracy and consolidate his power with the military's support.

Campaign Action

Formerly a fringe figure with little national influence, Bolsonaro ran as an outsider and capitalized on massive corruption scandals that had tarnished both the long-ruling leftist Workers' Party and the center-right parties supporting President Michel Temer, who came to power in 2016 after he and his allies used the pretext of corruption to execute a legislative coup that removed leftist President Dilma Rousseff. Temer and the mainstream Right ushered in brutal fiscal austerity policies that left him discredited and with an approval rating in the single digits.

Former leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is one of the most beloved politicians in a country that has otherwise soured on mainstream political figures, had been running to reclaim his old position, but after he was convicted and imprisoned for corruption, his Workers' Party had no popular standard-bearer and was left with Haddad. With voters fed up with endemic corruption, rising crime, and economic malaise, Bolsonaro stepped into that vacuum while Haddad was still saddled with voters' mistrust over his party's reputation for corruption.

Bolsonaro also benefited from a surge in Brazil's population of evangelical Christians, many of whom were drawn to his extreme hostility to abortion rights. Indeed, Bolsonaro is a virulent misogynist, homophobe, racist, and xenophobe: He once told a fellow member of Congress that she was too ugly to rape; has said if he had a gay son that he would prefer the child "die in an accident"; has commented that his actual sons were too "well-educated" to fall in love with black women; has disparaged indigenous and Afro-Brazilians as "lazy"; and has called African refugees the "scum of humanity."

Bolsonaro also holds plutocratic views on economic matters and was overwhelmingly backed by the business elite, since he favors neoliberal policies that will gut social protections for the working class. With devastating consequences for the global fight against climate change, Bolsonaro intends to let big corporations ravage the environment, and the Amazon rainforest in particular, by rolling back regulations put in place under the Workers' Party. And because his far-right Social Liberal Party and more mainstream conservatives made large gains, the highly fragmented new Congress leans strongly to the right.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday October 14, 2018 · 6:00 AM PDT

2018/10/14 · 06:00

Leading Off

● Brazil – president and legislature (Oct. 7 & Oct. 28)

In a dismaying result that has dire implications for the state of democracy in Brazil, far-right Congressman Jair Bolsonaro came close to winning the open presidency in the first round of voting. Bolsonaro secured 46 percent of the vote over leftist rival Fernando Haddad, who outpaced center-left candidate Ciro Gomez 29-13 for the second runoff spot. Polling had shown Bolsonaro surging after he was almost fatally stabbed at a campaign event in early September, but few polls anticipated that he would come so close to winning a majority.

Campaign Action

Bolsonaro and Haddad will proceed to the Oct. 28 runoff, and the first few polls taken since the initial vote on Oct. 7 show Bolsonaro favored to become Brazil's next president. A member of the conservative Social Liberal Party, the former Army captain openly admires the right-wing military dictatorship that ruled Brazil and violently suppressed political dissidents from 1964 to 1985. Indeed, Bolsonaro once said that regime's failing was that it didn't kill enough people. He has, predictably, also made numerous racist, sexist, and homophobic comments.

If Haddad can unite the supporters of other mainstream parties, he might yet have a chance. However, Haddad's leftist Workers' Party lost much of its popularity following Brazil's worst-ever recession and major corruption scandals that resulted in the center-right executing a legislative coup that removed former President Dilma Rousseff from office in 2016. The outgoing government of center-right President Michel Temer is extremely unpopular after ushering through austerity policies, and disaffection with both the right and the left made an opening for Bolsonaro.

Still, the Workers' Party has strong support among low-income voters, who hold fond memories of the tenure of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from 2003 to 2011 despite the fact that he was barred from running again this year due to a corruption conviction. Haddad could make inroads by campaigning hard against Bolsonaro's right-wing economic policies, but the business community has been rallying around Bolsonaro, and support from mainstream center-right voters could be decisive as voters turn to an outsider to tackle issues like corruption and crime.

Brazil's Congress is extremely fragmented among the parties, but Bolsonaro's Social Liberal Party made major gains, going from almost no seats to nearly displacing the Workers' Party as the largest in the lower chamber. Still, neither holds much more than 10 percent of the chamber's seats. However, right-leaning parties overall made large gains at the expense of the center, which could provide Bolsonaro with many legislative allies if he's elected later this month.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday September 09, 2018 · 6:00 AM PDT

2018/09/09 · 06:00

Jair Bolsonaro, presidential candidate for the Social Liberal Party, attends an interview for Correio Brazilianse newspaper in Brasilia on June 6, 2018. - Brazil holds general elections in October. (Photo by EVARISTO SA / AFP) (Photo credit should read EVARISTO SA/AFP/Getty Images) — Far-right Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro

Leading Off

● Brazil – president (Oct. 7 & 28)

With just a month to go ahead of October's vote, Brazil’s presidential election was thrown into chaos on Thursday, when the leading far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, was stabbed at a campaign event and seriously injured. Bolsonaro remains in the hospital after surgery, and doctors said he could take weeks to recover. But that wasn’t the only bombshell to seriously shake up the contest in just the span of a week: On Aug. 31, Brazil's electoral tribunal barred former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, from running for president again following the 12-year prison sentence for corruption he received in January.

Campaign Action

After presiding over a historic period of economic growth and policies that reduced poverty, improved education, and promoted racial equality, Lula remains Brazil's most popular politician, and he had dominated in the polls for the upcoming vote. However, his administration was also marred by the widespread corruption that is endemic to Brazilian politics. With Lula unable to run, his leftist Workers' Party (PT) has rallied around Fernando Haddad as its standard-bearer, but Haddad himself was indicted on corruption charges on Tuesday.

Furthermore, the tenure of Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached and removed from office in 2016 as part of a legislative coup by pro-business politicians using the infamous "Car Wash" corruption scandal as a pretext, saw the PT's popularity tumble amid Brazil's worst-ever recession. Meanwhile, center-right President Michel Temer, who replaced Rousseff, has an approval rating in the single digits after pushing through brutal austerity policies and doing nothing to tackle corruption.

Consequently, candidates affiliated with the more established parties have struggled to gain traction with voters fed up with never-ending corruption scandals, creating an opening for the far-right Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party. A former Army captain, Bolsonaro openly waxes poetic about Brazil's right-wing military dictatorship that ruled from 1964 to 1985, and as a social conservative hardliner, he's benefitted from a rising tide in the political power of his fellow evangelical Protestants in this traditionally Catholic country.

With the PT discredited in the absence of Lula, those hoping to stop Bolsonaro may end up rallying around former Sen. Marina Silva, who ran in 2014 under the center-left Socialist Party banner and came in third place. A devoted environmentalist, Silva is running this time under the centrist Sustainability Network. However, Silva's own evangelical religious views find her siding with social conservatives on issues like opposing abortion rights, though she is far better positioned to make an anti-corruption argument than the PT. It's still far from guaranteed, though, that she'll make the runoff against Bolsonaro.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday August 12, 2018 · 10:59 AM PDT

2018/08/12 · 10:59

Leading Off

● Mexico – president & legislature (July 1)

Mexico's presidential and congressional elections last month were nothing short of a total and unprecedented victory for the left. Not only did Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) become the first leftist to win the presidency in several decades and the first contender to win with a majority of the vote since the country transitioned to genuine multi-party democracy in the 1990s, his National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party and its allies also won their first-ever outright majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Campaign Action

Lopez Obrador's victory represented a thorough rejection of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose leader, President Enrique Pena Nieto, had become extremely unpopular after his lone six-year term in power. Lopez Obrador scored a crushing 53-22 landslide over the conservative National Action Party (PAN) candidate, Ricardo Anaya, while the PRI nominee, Jose Antonio Meade, fell to just 16 percent. And because Mexico imposes a single-term limit on both the president and all members of Congress, and because gender quotas were introduced in 2014, women surged to parity with men in both chambers.

With his win, Lopez Obrador finally broke a long losing streak: He narrowly lost to PAN in the disputed 2006 presidential election, then lost 38-32 to Pena Nieto in 2012, but voter dissatisfaction with the PRI over the economy and its failure to contain the widespread violence fueled by drug cartels led the electorate to swing massively toward Lopez Obrador and MORENA as agents of change.

With his allies in firm control of Congress, Lopez Obrador is well-positioned to institute major policy changes, though unlike left-wing authoritarians Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Rafael Correa in Ecuador, analysts say he is not a populist threat to democracy. Rather, Lopez Obrador has prioritized fighting corruption in a country that is infamous for it, and he has vowed to increase social security pensions, anti-poverty program funding, and scholarships for education.

However, MORENA's alliance with the small, right-wing Social Encounter Party (PES) will likely disappoint progressives on issues like LGBTQ rights and abortion. While MORENA and the even more left-wing Labor Party narrowly hold majorities even without PES, Lopez Obrador himself has previously said that social issues are "not that important" compared to fighting poverty and corruption.

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