The Origins and Rationality of the “Legal versus Legitimate” Dichotomy Invoked in Mexico's 2006 Post-Electoral Conflict

Abstract

Months after Mexico's independent electoral institute had validated the July 2, 2006, presidential elections, and weeks after the autonomous electoral court had certified National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderón as president, runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador continued to cry foul. Days before the court's final September 5 ruling, López Obrador (known widely as “AMLO”), representing the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Coalition for the Good of All, decided to disband the mobilizations blocking some of Mexico City's main transportation arteries, but to continue protesting indefinitely, and to name a “shadow cabinet,” to press Calderón. López Obrador lost the election by a hair (a mere 233,831 votes, out of over 41,700,000 cast—the final certified number after electoral court rulings), but he did lose, and in a “free and fair” contest organized by one of the world's more respected electoral institutions.

Who Believes in Fraud in the 2006 Mexican Presidential Election? Election Denialism, Partisan Motivated Reasoning, and Affective Polarization

“…While the country experienced a long history of systematic electoral fraud during the PRI's hegemonic era , the IFE was a product of the 1996 electoral reform in which the PRI and opposition parties-the centerright PAN and the center-left PRD-created an independent electoral institution to organize national elections. Since then, Mexican elections are widely recognized as free and fair (Eisenstadt 2007). Until 2006, the IFE was widely trusted by both winners and losers of the elections (Moreno 2022).…”

“…In the 2006 presidential election, the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Andrés Manuel López Obrador, claimed that a corrupt elite-a "political mafia" (mafia del poder in Spanish)-made up of the two main parties in Mexico, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN), as well as the business sector and electoral institutions, had stolen the presidency from him (Bruhn 2012). Although the Federal Electoral Institute (Instituto Federal Electoral, IFE), international observers, and most parties in Mexico besides López Obrador's PRD stated that the electoral process had been free and fair (Eisenstadt 2007; Ugues 2010), López Obrador organized massive protests and refused to accept the election's outcome (Aparicio 2009;Bruhn 2012). In the 2012 and 2018 presidential campaigns, López Obrador relied on a populist rhetoric similar to that of his 2006 campaign, and he again denounced the same political establishment for being part of a corrupt elite that had robbed him of the presidency in 2006 and impoverished Mexico with neoliberal policies and widespread corruption.…”

Happy Winners, Sore Partisans? Political Trust, Partisanship, and the Populist Assault on Electoral Integrity in Mexico

“…Elections and the independence of electoral authorities have been a matter of bitter partisan contention ever since the country began its protracted transition to democracy and, more recently, since Felipe Calderon Hinojosa was declared the winner of the 2006 presidential election by a thin margin of 0.5 per cent over the runner-up, López Obrador (Eisenstadt, 2007; Estrada and Poiré, 2007). Analyzing legal reforms since 1996, Langston (2020) argues that the rules of electoral governance in Mexico are immersed in a non-cooperative game where party leaders constantly cheat the rules but demand fairness and a level playing field at the same time.…”

The 2012 Elections in Mexico: The Birth of a Consolidated Federal Democracy?

“…These negotiations were used in the 1980s and 1990s in order to strike deals and ease the tensions in often fraudulent elections. As the old days of concertacesión bargains have been supplanted by a more institutionalized and transparent process (Eisenstadt, 2007), new tactics have been sought under a more competitive electoral environment.…”