1988 Mexican general election

1988 Mexican general election

6 July 1988

Presidential election

← 1982 1994 →

Nominee Carlos Salinas de Gortari Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Manuel Clouthier Party PRI FDN PAN Popular vote 9,687,926 5,929,585 3,208,584 Percentage 50.71% 31.03% 16.79%

Results by state

President before election Miguel de la Madrid PRI Elected President Carlos Salinas de Gortari PRI

Senate

← 1982 1991 →

All 64 seats in the Senate of the Republic 33 seats needed for a majority

Party Leader % Seats +/– PRI Jorge de la Vega Domínguez 50.83 60 −3 PMS Heberto Castillo 4.23 4 +4 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

Chamber of Deputies

← 1985 1991 →

All 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies 251 seats needed for a majority

Party Leader % Seats +/– PRI Jorge de la Vega Domínguez 50.97 260 −32 PAN Luis H. Álvarez 18.00 101 +63 PFCRN Rafael Aguilar Talamantes 9.20 49 +38 PPS Jorge Cruickshank García 4.33 23 −15 PARM Carlos Cantú Rosas 6.18 30 +19 PMS Heberto Castillo 4.45 24 +6 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

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General elections were held in Mexico on 6 July 1988.^[1] They were the first competitive presidential elections in Mexico since the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) took power in 1929. The elections were widely considered to have been fraudulent, with Salinas de Gortari and the PRI resorting to electoral tampering to remain in power.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari was declared the winner of the presidential election, with the Ministry of Interior saying he had received 50.7% of the vote. It was the lowest for a winning candidate since direct elections were introduced for the presidency in 1917; in all previous presidential elections, the PRI had faced no serious opposition and had won with percentages of votes well over 70%.^[2] In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Institutional Revolutionary Party won 260 of the 500 seats,^[3] as well as winning 60 of the 64 seats in the Senate election.^[4]

Although early results of the parallel vote tabulation had indicated Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas was winning, when the official results were announced, Salinas was said to have won by a wide margin. All of the opposition candidates denounced that the elections had been rigged, and there were many protests throughout the country against the electoral fraud, including demonstrations by opposition lawmakers in the Congress. Salinas de Gortari, however, was able to take office on 1 December as President, after the PRI-dominated Congress declared that his election had been valid.^[5]