1988 Mexican general election

1988 Mexican general election

6 July 1988
Presidential election
← 1982
1994 →
Turnout52.01% (Decrease 22.83pp)
 
Nominee Carlos Salinas de Gortari Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Manuel Clouthier
Party PRI FDN PAN
Popular vote 9,687,926 5,929,585 3,208,584
Percentage 50.71% 31.03% 16.79%

Results by state

President before election

Miguel de la Madrid
PRI

Elected President

Carlos Salinas de Gortari
PRI

Senate
← 1982
1991 →

All 64 seats in the Senate of the Republic
33 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/–
PRI Jorge de la Vega Domínguez 50.83 60 −3
PMS Heberto Castillo 4.23 4 +4
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Chamber of Deputies
← 1985
1991 →

All 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies
251 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/–
PRI Jorge de la Vega Domínguez 50.97 260 −32
PAN Luis H. Álvarez 18.00 101 +63
PFCRN Rafael Aguilar Talamantes 9.20 49 +38
PPS Jorge Cruickshank García 4.33 23 −15
PARM Carlos Cantú Rosas 6.18 30 +19
PMS Heberto Castillo 4.45 24 +6
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

General elections were held in Mexico on 6 July 1988.[1] They were the first competitive presidential elections in Mexico since the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) took power in 1929. The elections were widely considered to have been fraudulent, with the PRI resorting to electoral tampering to remain in power.

PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari was proclaimed the winner of the presidential election, with the Ministry of Interior reporting he received 51% of the vote. It was the lowest for a winning candidate since direct presidential elections were inaugurated in 1917; in all previous presidential elections, the PRI faced no serious opposition and won with well over 70% of the vote.[2] In the Chamber of Deputies election, the PRI won 260 of the 500 seats,[3] as well as winning 60 of the 64 seats in the Senate election.[4]

Although early results from the parallel vote tabulation indicated that Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas was leading, when the official results were published, Salinas de Gortari was claimed to have won by a large margin. All of the opposition candidates decried the rigged elections, and there were numerous rallies across the country, including those by opposition MPs in Congress. However, Salinas de Gortari was allowed to take office as President on December 1 after the PRI-dominated Congress ruled his election legitimate.[5]

  1. ^ Dieter Nohlen (2005) Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I, p453 ISBN 978-0-19-928357-6
  2. ^ Nohlen, pp471-474
  3. ^ Nohlen, p469
  4. ^ Nohlen, p470
  5. ^ Cantú, Francisco (2019). "The Fingerprints of Fraud: Evidence from Mexico's 1988 Presidential Election". American Political Science Review. 113 (3): 710–726. doi:10.1017/S0003055419000285. ISSN 0003-0554.