Mexico’s 2024 elections will be held this Sunday, giving around 100 million eligible voters the opportunity to elect nearly 20,000 municipal, state and federal representatives.
According to the National Electoral Institute (INE), the elections will be the largest ever in Mexico.
In this guide, Mexico News Daily gives you all the essential information about the June 2 elections: What positions are up for grabs? Who are the presidential candidates? When do the polls open and close? And more.
What are Mexicans voting for this Sunday?
According to the INE, more than 19,000 positions are up for grabs in Mexico’s 2024 elections.
Federal elections:
At the federal level, Mexicans will elect a new president to replace Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as 500 deputies to the Chamber of Deputies and 128 senators to the Senate.
State elections:
Voters in eight states will elect new governors: Chiapas; Guanajuato; Jalisco; Morelos; (click here to see our guide to those contests) Puebla; Tabasco; Veracruz and Yucatán (click here to see our guide to those contests).
In Mexico City, which has state-like status, voters will elect a new mayor (jefe/a de gobierno). Click here to see who is contesting that election.
Voters in the capital will also elect deputies to the Mexico City Congress.
In each of the 31 states, voters will elect deputies to their respective state congresses.
Municipal elections:
The total number of positions up for grabs is as high as it is largely because citizens will elect thousands upon thousands of municipal representatives on Sunday.
In Puebla alone, for example, voters will elect 1,818 councilors across 217 municipalities.
Municipal elections will be held in every state in the country except Durango and Veracruz.
Voters will elect mayors, councilors and trustees in the majority of Mexico’s almost 2,500 municipalities. Guadalajara and Monterrey are among the major cities holding municipal elections this Sunday.
Who are the presidential candidates?
Two women and one man are vying to become the next president of Mexico. If either of the women win, Mexico will get a female president for the first time ever. The three candidates are:
- Bertha Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, candidate for the Strength and Heart for Mexico (Fuerza y Corazón por México) alliance, made up of the National Action Party (PAN), Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).
- Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, candidate for the Let’s Keep Making History (Sigamos Haciendo Historia) coalition, made up of the ruling Morena party, the Labor Party (PT) and the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM).
- Jorge Álvarez Máynez, candidate for the Citizens Movement (MC) party.
President López Obrador, who was elected in 2018 with more than 53% of the vote, is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term.
Who’s going to win?
Sheinbaum, mayor of Mexico City between 2018 and 2023, has a clear lead in the polls.
Separate poll results published by the El Universal, El Economista and El País newspapers on Monday and Tuesday showed that the Morena candidate has a lead of 20 points or more over Gálvez. Álvarez Máynez is in a distant third place.
Unless the election is extremely close, the winner will be known sometime on Sunday night.
Did the presidential candidates face off in debates?
Gálvez, Sheinbaum and Álvarez Máynez participated in three debates during the campaign period, each of which was held in Mexico City. They engaged on key issues for voters including the economy, security, education, health, poverty and inequality.
Links to MND’s reviews of the three debates are below.
How does voting work in the federal elections?
In the presidential election, the candidate with the highest number of votes wins even if she or he doesn’t receive majority support. In other words, there is no second round, or runoff.
In the congressional elections, deputies and senators are elected directly and via a proportional representation system.
In the Chamber of Deputies, 200 of the 500 seats are allocated to parties depending on the level of support they receive, while 32 of the Senate positions are allocated in that way.
The representatives elected via the proportional representation system are known as plurinominal deputies and senators.
When does the campaign period end?
The official campaign period – which for the presidential election began March 1 – will conclude this Wednesday, May 29.
Candidates are prohibited from holding events or campaigning in any other way during the final three days before election day.
When do polls open and close?
Polls will open at 8 a.m. local time Sunday in each of Mexico’s 32 federal entities. They will close at 6 p.m.
According to INE, more than 170,000 casillas, or voting booths, will be set up for the elections.
Will international observers monitor the elections?
The INE announced Sunday that it had accredited 1,309 of 1,355 foreigners who requested to observe Mexico’s 2024 elections.
Among the international observers will be representatives from the Organization of American States and the United States, Canadian and British embassies in Mexico.
Can Mexicans vote from outside Mexico?
According to the INE, Mexican citizens have/have had the opportunity to vote from abroad by mail, online or in person at approved consular offices.
Almost 40,000 citizens were removed from Mexico’s foreign electoral roll earlier this year due to what the INE called “irregularities” or “inconsistencies” in their voter registration applications.
However, the majority of those people – 36,570 – were subsequently reinstated.
How many candidates have been killed?
The New York Times reported last week that an analysis it conducted found that “at least 36 people seeking office have been killed since last June.”
There have been dozens of other killings linked in one way or another to the elections this Sunday.
Violent attacks perpetrated by organized crime groups against candidates most commonly occur at the municipal level.
“The surge in [electoral] violence plaguing Mexico,” the Times reported, “can largely be traced to local criminal groups, according to security analysts and law enforcement officials.”
When will the new president and federal lawmakers take office?
The new president will be sworn in for a six-year term on Oct. 1.
The federal deputies and senators elected this Sunday will start their terms one month earlier on Sept. 1.
Mexico News Daily
