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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

ecological inference, 2000 Mexican elections, presidential election, voting behavior

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Political Science

Abstract

In the 2000 Mexican Election, the PRI party lost a presidential election for the first time in Mexico’s history to Vincente Fox of the PAN party. There has been a great deal of recent scholarship examining voting behavior in Mexico. Most of it has focused on the calculation that risk-averse voters make in deciding whether to defect from the PRI i. There has been, however, little scholarship on why voters then choose a party other than the PRI. Individuals don’t just all defect; they need someone to defect to. Previous studies have not found evidence of social determinants, such as personal economic interests or social class, influencing individual vote choices.ii However, the changes in the institutional and political environment in Mexico over the last decade have created new opportunities for voters to evaluate the performance of the various parties and their platforms. As uncertainty about party performance decreases, the ability of voters to vote on the basis of the candidates’ issue positions (to vote prospectively) potentially increases. Finding differences between how groups voted would provide evidence of this shift.

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