Anyone that has read my blog posts know that I frequently like to analyze the numbers. Connect-the-dots, if you like. One of the coolest things about the Mexican election is that the ballot counting was put online as the process was completed. It is an interesting mix of manual processes and technology that makes the election transparent and efficient while keeping the sanctity of the individual vote. I’ll get into that what America can learn from Mexico’s election in tomorrow’s post. Today, however, let’s look at some interesting numbers.
The Mexican government created an online system where the raw voter numbers are made available to everyone. We can either download the data or we can generate different views of the data online as the counting continues. For example, we can look at the national results and how many votes each candidate received.
The system also allows us to look at the results at the macro – national – level as well as needling down to each voting location. The raw data lets us look for instances of fraud by comparing the results, including the number of ballots tossed for irregularities.
In a country as large as México, often accused of corruption and in an election where the populist won, the numbers become more interesting. Here are the interesting details I saw.
Did AMLO take all the states?
No, López Obrador lost eleven of 32 states, or 34% of the states. His worst showing was in Guanajuato with only 30% of the vote. Fifty-three percent of Guanajuato’s registered voters cast a vote. AMLO’s best showing at the state level was Tabasco with 80.09% of the vote. Over 70% of Tabasco’s voters cast a vote.
The worst voter participation was in Sonora, with 51.89% of the voters participating. Yucatán’s voters participated the most, at 75.38% of registered voters casting a vote.
Cd. Juárez
Some readers may be interested in knowing how El Paso’s sister city, Cd. Juárez fared in the election. Andrés Manuel López Obrador received 310,400 votes cast in Juárez. That is 51.94% of the votes cast. A total of 597,589 votes were cast in Juárez.
Foreign Votes
One of the things I was most interested in was what affect, if any, those of us Mexicans who voted from abroad had on the results. There were 181,256 Mexican voters registered to vote from abroad. A little over half of us cast a vote, 54.32%. Of those, 64.86% cast votes in favor of AMLO, a much higher result then the national votes. However, the foreign votes accounted for less than one percent of all the votes cast in the election.
The votes are still preliminary as the process has yet to be completed, but it is based on the totals from all ballots cast. The results, nonetheless, show that AMLO won the election with 53.19% of the votes. Remember that in México, a vote cast is directly counted towards the candidate it was cast for. It is a direct vote as México does not use an electoral college scheme.
Tomorrow, will look at what America can learn from the Mexican elections.
