AMLO’s Coalition Sweeps Mexico’s Chamber and Senate
2 July 2018
With over 60 percent of the votes counted so far in Mexico’s general elections on Sunday, the Morena party and the Together We Will Make History coalition are slated to gain an absolute majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and Senate giving freshly elected president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, ample legislative support when he enters office next December.
According to political scientist Javier Marquez at the Center for Economic Investigations (CIDE), Morena and the Together We Will Make History coalition Morena won 193 seats and the coalition partner, the Workers’ Party (PT) took another 54 deputies in the house. The conservative Social Encounter Party (PES) that also forms a part of the coalition won 58, giving the coalition a combined 312 seats out of the house’s 500.
In the Senate, Morena is set to gain 55 of 128 seats. The PT won six and PES, eight. This makes a coalition total of 69 – an absolute majority in the Senate as well, as was projected. In all, Morena candidates won 91 percent of all congressional districts.
The centrist National Action Party (PAN) will have 79 house deputies and the current ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party – PRI – went from 204 to 42 seats in the house, according to Marquez and the National Electoral Institute. The remainder of the seats will be occupied by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and smaller parties.
In the Senate, PAN won 23 seats, PRI 12, and the PRD, nine.
AMLO’s Morena party also swept the local elections. The party took 80.2 percent of municipal polls, while PAN had a sorry turn out of 11.5 percent and the PRI, 8.2 percent of local votes.
In his acceptance speech on Sunday night, Lopez Obrador called on Mexicans to put aside personal interests in politics and make the public interest priority.
