Mexico Presidential election 2018 — Results

The vote in brief

The Mexican general election of 1 July 2018 was the largest in the country's history and one of the most consequential since the end of one-party rule. Andrés Manuel López Obrador — universally known by his initials, AMLO — won the presidency by a landslide, taking 54.71% of the vote at his third attempt and breaking the duopoly that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN) had exercised over the presidency since 2000. His National Regeneration Movement (Morena), founded only in 2014, swept to a majority in both houses of Congress, marking a realignment of Mexican politics around a new left-nationalist movement.

How the voting works

The President of the United Mexican States is elected for a single six-year term — the sexenio — with no possibility of re-election, ever, a principle inherited from the Revolution. The election uses a simple plurality (first-past-the-post) of the national popular vote: there is no run-off and no electoral college, so a candidate can win with far less than half the vote. The same day, voters renew the entire 500-seat Chamber of Deputies and the 128-seat Senate. Elections are organised by the National Electoral Institute (INE), an autonomous body whose independence was the central achievement of Mexico's democratic transition.

The campaign trail

López Obrador ran for a third time at the head of the "Juntos Haremos Historia" coalition, uniting Morena with the small Labour Party (PT) and the socially conservative Social Encounter Party (PES). He campaigned against the "mafia of power", promising to root out corruption, fight violence with a "hugs not bullets" strategy and govern austerely on behalf of the poor. The governing PRI, battered by corruption scandals and the unpopularity of President Enrique Peña Nieto, nominated the technocrat José Antonio Meade as a non-party candidate. The PAN-led "Por México al Frente", an unusual alliance with the left-wing PRD and Citizens' Movement, chose the young former party president Ricardo Anaya. The campaign unfolded against a backdrop of record homicide rates, anger over the 2014 Ayotzinapa disappearances, and Donald Trump's hostility toward Mexico.

The results in detail

López Obrador won 30.1 million votes (54.71%), more than double the total of his nearest rival. Anaya took 22.91% and Meade just 16.88% — the PRI's worst presidential result ever. The independent "El Bronco", Jaime Rodríguez, managed 5.38%. AMLO carried 31 of the 32 federal entities, losing only the PAN bastion of Guanajuato to Anaya, and his coattails delivered a congressional majority that no president had enjoyed since the PRI's hegemonic decades. Turnout reached 63.4%.

What followed

Sworn in on 1 December 2018, López Obrador launched what he called the "Fourth Transformation" of Mexico, cancelling Mexico City's partly built new airport, cutting public-sector salaries, expanding cash-transfer programmes and creating a militarised National Guard. His personal popularity remained high throughout the term, setting the stage for Morena's even larger victory in 2024. Critics warned that his concentration of power, attacks on the INE and the press, and reliance on the armed forces eroded the institutional checks built during the transition — a debate that defined the sexenio.

Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.