Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and His Electoral Alliance Win General Elections in Mexico

Leftist candidate and former head of government of Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is elected as Mexico’s new president alongside his new electoral alliance, Together We’ll Make History, in the legislature during July 1’s Sunday elections nationwide. Early results have shown that Obrador received more than 50% of popular vote whereas other candidates who have already conceded, such as center-right Ricardo Anaya, independent Jaime Rodriguez, and centrist Jose Antonio Meade, received less than 30% of the popular vote. Obrador’s political party within his alliance, the left-wing National Regeneration Movement or MORENA, gained more than 30% of the legislative vote in both houses of the national congress. The far-left Labor Party and the far-right Social Encounter Party also gained seats as part of the Obrador’s alliance.

Obrador will become the country’s first democratically elected leftist president in its history, disrupting the traditional rule of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI and the conservative National Action Party or PAN. While countries throughout the Americas such as Chile and Colombia have shifted politically right in recent elections, Obrador’s populist and anti-establishment campaign promising serious NAFTA renegotiations between the U.S. and Canada, opposition to the proposed border wall by U.S. President Donald Trump, lowering salaries of top government officials, raising wages for the poor, turning the presidential palace into a public park, and tackling government corruption as well as crime resonated with millions of voter across the country, including younger voters between the ages of 18 and 35 years-old. Obrador will be sworn in on December 1st, 2018.