The problem is that both major candidates have less than 40% of the vote, and the one behind in the count is claiming victory.

Election officials declared Sunday that they could not immediately determine a winner in the tightest presidential race in the country's history. Minutes later, the two front runners each declared victory, setting in motion an electoral crisis.

The contest pitted Felipe Calderón, a conservative former energy minister backed by business leaders, against Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the firebrand leftist former mayor of Mexico City, supported mostly by the poor.

Mr. López Obrador said at a downtown hotel he would respect the decision of the election institute even if he lost by one vote. Yet in the same breath he maintained he was convinced he had won by 500,000 votes. "This result is irreversible," he said.

Appearing before supporters a few minutes later at his party headquarters, Mr. Calderón rattled off the results of several surveys of voters leaving the polls and counts of key districts that showed he had won. "There is not the slightest doubt that we have won the election," he said.

Surveys of polling stations by election officials showed the contest was too close to call, and they urged people to remain calm until official results could be reported. The only thing clear was that a third candidate, Roberto Madrazo, the former governor of Tabasco State, was trailing the two front-runners.

At 11 p.m., with a quarter of the polling places counted, Mr. Calderón led the race with 38 percent the vote, compared to 35 percent for Mr. López Obrador. Mr. Madrazo had 19 percent.

Now my concern is what happens next. The votes will take a couple of days to be counted -- and if the trends hold, Calderón will be the winner. But López Obrador is the former mayor of the capital city, and could easily instigate a crisis by formenting an uprising among the many poor in Mexico City. After all, he has declared the result ireversible -- will he be willing to step back from the precipice if the final count proves him wrong, especially given his appeals to the people in earlier in the election to keep from being removed from the ballot?

Posted by: Greg at 06:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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