1940 Mexican general election

1940 Mexican general election

7 July 1940
Presidential election
← 1934
1946 →
 
Nominee Manuel Ávila Camacho Juan Andreu Almazán
Party PRM PRUN
Popular vote 2,476,641 151,101
Percentage 93.90% 5.73%

President before election

Lázaro Cárdenas
PRM

Elected President

Manuel Ávila Camacho
PRM

General elections were held in Mexico on 7 July 1940.[1] The presidential elections were won by Manuel Ávila Camacho, who received 94% of the vote. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Party of the Mexican Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Mexicana, PRM) won all but one of the 173 seats.[2]

The campaign was very intense, with clashes between Camacho's and Almazán's supporters becoming common throughout the electoral process. The elections were the most violent in Mexican history, with clashes between Camacho's and Almazán's supporters on election day resulting in at least 47 deaths and 400 people being injured.

This was the only presidential election in which the PRM participated under that name. It had been the National Revolutionary Party (Partido Nacional Revolucionario, PNR) from 1929 to 1938, being renamed Party of the Mexican Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Mexicana, PRM) in 1938, and again changing its name in 1946 to Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI), which remains its current name.

  1. ^ Dieter Nohlen (2005) Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I, p453 ISBN 978-0-19-928357-6
  2. ^ Nohlen, p468