Mexico’s next president, Felipe Calderon
Source: Agencia EFE, via Yahoo! Mexico

Free-Market Felipe Calderon wins the race
Source: El Universal

Continued from this earlier Publius Pundit post here.

El Universal has the final count here, along with AMLO’s statement that he won’t accept the result. Here we go again! It’s just like Monday!

Mexican markets are going hog wild with happiness!

Boli-Nica has an interesting essay on the election here and the need to pay attention to Mexico, here.

Miami Herald is reporting that Mexico’s election agency is taking a lot of heat from AMLO people who don’t like the result of the vote. This agency is so first-rate it helped organize Iraq’s purple finger election. The more I hear about this, the less I like the behavior of the AMLO-ites. They’d be better off yelling at the Calderon voters, not abusing the electoral authority, in my opinion. The story is here.

Mark in Mexico has more excellent liveblogging perspective on why the vote was so confusing at first, it’s good reading here.

OK, now I’m gonna throw up. Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vissarionovich Rangel is declaring Mexico’s election a fraud. He’s just given Mexico’s voters ONE MORE REASON to despise the Hugo Chavez government not only for horning in on an election that is none of their business, not only for insulting their choice of president, but also for lying in an effort to delegitimize their effort. I’m gonna be sick. Agencia EFE has the whole lunatic story from one of the hemisphere’s foremost fraudmeisters himself here. And here is another one, from some other Chavez minions, basically denouncing Mexico’s non-use of Chavista-owned electronic voting machines. If I were Mexican, I’d be totally disgusted.

El Universal has the final tally in, with 100% of the precincts counted – the final score: AMLO: 35.31%, Calderon: 35.88, a percentage point differential of just 57 basis points!

Victory is victory!

Big PAN rally ahead of the July 2 presidential vote
Source: Agencia EFE, via Yahoo! Mexico

UPDATE: The Catholic Church is asking AMLO not to ‘burn the country’ with his fraud claims and to accept the result. Not that I am extremely hopeful but AMLO claims to carry a rosary, so maybe he will listen. El Universal has the item here.

UPDATE: Daniel at Venezuela News & Views has two terrific new essays, the first praising the professionalism of the IFE and comparing it unfavorably to its counterpart, the CNE of Chavista Venezuela. The second is even more intriguing, he writes a fanciful account of how Mexico could utilize and benefit from a parliamentary system. I love his subtle use of typical Mexican names in his hypothetical story – only someone who really knows Mexico could come up with those names! I hesitate to agree with him on the virtues of a parliamentary system, but I know many Publius readers, including Rob Mayer, might not. To me, parliamentary systems lead to all these do-nothing, go-nowhere, directionless, leadership-free European governments, which I can’t stand. Or maybe I am just relieved that Mexico has not elected a Chavista and want to cheer the current system whatever the heck it is that brought us such joy. But Daniel presents a great case well worth reading here.

UPDATE: Fausta at Fausta’s Blog has a bit more here.

UPDATE:Mark in Mexico has two more terrific posts here and here, one is on how Mexico’s electoral system and how it works, and the other is on shenanigans of the AMLO camp and why they are happening, both must-sees.

UPDATE: The New York Times has gotten busy with the important business of impugning the integrity of the election. They aren’t even trying for balance, they’ve been pro-AMLO for a long time and now they’re doing their best to discredit Mexico’s young democracy by repeating every unsubstantiated charge of fraud without evidence and present none of the other evidence that there wasn’t any fraud. Compare and contrast to the estimable Mary O’Grady’s serious Wall Street Journal reporting on the election from the ground level here, or Mark in Mexico‘s careful explanations of the balloting all through these posts here. This NYT reporting sucks.

UPDATE: Fausta at Fausta’s Blog, via Boli-Nica, has a YouTube of AMLO being unreasonable on Mexican television here.

UPDATE: Mary O’Grady, in today’s WSJ column – subscription only – scoops on how AMLO is trying to manipulate the result, it’s kind of creepy, here is an excerpt:

When I met with Felipe Calder????n on Tuesday afternoon, he told me he hadn’t a shadow of a doubt that he had won. All parties had copies of the tallies and the PAN had done the arithmetic.

I didn’t see any reason for Mr. Calder????n to be lying about this and independent observers confirmed it too. But at 9 on Wednesday evening, with 81% of the country’s polling stations reporting, Mr. L????pez Obrador had a lead of two percentage points and my phone started to ring. Mexicans were beginning to wonder about the preliminary count on Sunday that showed the PAN victorious. The only places I found total calm were at the PAN campaign headquarters and among electoral wonks who assured me that Sunday tallies would hold and that time would prove the Calder????n victory.

The problem, as it finally emerged, was in the flow of polling-station reports. What we had seen late on Wednesday evening were reports from this city and other PRD strongholds. Tally sheets from polling stations in heavily pro-PAN states were being held back.

It now seems that these delays, which were later confirmed, were not an accident. While it is true that many of the pro-PAN states lie to the west of the country, two hours behind the capital, even that doesn’t account for the enormous distortions in reporting into the wee hours of Thursday. For example, at 1:30 a.m., when most states had either closed their books or reported more than 90% of polling station results, the heavily Panista states of Nuevo Leon, Guanajato, Baja California and Sonora still had less than 90% of their polling stations reporting. Word went out that PRD polling station officials in these states were dragging their feet in signing off on the tally sheets. The clear objective was to give Mexicans the impression that AMLO had secured a victory, only to have it pulled from him in the dark of the night.

Pretty disgusting!

UPDATE: Calderon has come out swinging against Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez! El Universal has the item, in Spanish, here. Venezuela’s El Universal has Calderon vowing he won’t bow to Chavez for anything, either, here.

UPDATE: El Universal also reports that President Bush has warmed congratulated Felipe Calderon by phone in this news here.

UPDATE: Daniel at Venezuela News & Views expounds in a bit more detail about why he thinks a parliamentary system would work well in Mexico, and indeed all of Latin America, citing many historic precedents. It’s an intriguing read here.

UPDATE: BBC reports that the European Union’s respected (and un-Carterly) electoral observers have certified Mexico’s election as free and fair! It’s terrific! The item is here.

UPDATE: Via RealClearPolitics, Eugene Robinson has a nicely written essay in the Washington Post on the AMLO factor in Mexico’s election. But I think he has it exactly backwards. He writes that AMLO’s popularity is a sure sign of the leftist head winds that are blowing all through Latin America. He neglects to realize that Calderon WON. I disagree with Robinson but his essay is still worth reading here.

WALL STREET:

Goldman Sachs reports, as of Friday:

IFE Confirms Victory by Calder????n

Yesterday night, Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) concluded its final vote count, confirming that Felipe Calder????n (PAN) won with 35.89% of the votes, a 0.58% lead over AMLO (PRD), who received 35.31% of the votes. Madrazo (PRI) received 22.26% of the votes. With a total of 41.7 million votes, this means that Calder????n won by a margin of 243,934 votes. The final results are almost identical to the preliminary vote count (PREP), according to which Calder????n won by 0.6%, or about 250,000 votes.

Today, the IFE reported that the PAN won the most votes for the Lower House, with 33.29%, followed by the PRD in second, with 28.99%. The PRI fell to third place in the House with 28.1%, after being the largest force in the House. The IFE has yet to release the formulas used to distribute the 200 of the 500 seats assigned by proportional representation (plurinominales).

Today, Calder????n received congratulations from several foreign heads of state. Speaking to foreign press correspondents, Calder????n said that he had no doubts that he is Mexico’s President elect. He reiterated his appeal to the opposition to form a government of national unit. He said that he would like to add to his government program policies and contributions from the opposition.

Evidently, Calder????n is aware that he will not be able to do much in Congress, unless he establishes some form of cooperation, particularly with the PRI. Calder????n told the press that he has been trying to reach AMLO, adding that perhaps this meeting may have to wait until the tempers cool off a bit. Calder????n said that on Monday he will start assembling his transition team, but he refrained from giving any names.

Over the weekend, the main thing to watch will be the gathering being organized in support of AMLO in Mexico City, at the Z????calo. At the meeting, AMLO will present a report documenting the alleged irregularities during the elections. The PRD has only until Monday to file its appeal with the TEPFJ.

Watching all the main newscasts in Mexico, the overall response to AMLO’s attempt to appeal and invalidate the elections was measured and level-headed. Most experts (including the former head of the IFE, Jose Woldenberg) said that the appeal should be considered, being precisely the reason why the TEPJF was put in place, so that politicians would appeal though institutions instead of the streets.

However, the head of the IFE, Luis Carlos Ugalde said that “doubting the IFE is to put in doubt hundreds of thousands of Mexicans…the IFE met is responsibilities, and if any political party wants to appeal, it is free to do so and it is their right to appeal to the TEPJF.”

Comment: It is likely that in coming weeks, the political process will remain clouded somewhat by the appeal and protests being organized by AMLO.

With the caveat that elections are not over until they are over, we believe that the most likely scenario is that the TEPJF will confirm Calder????n. Going forward, we believe that an endorsement from the PRI and Madrazo would be vital to allow Calder????n to build a working political base in Congress, without which he will not be able to do much more than what President Fox achieved in terms of reforms. Thus far, the only formal statement from the PRI’s National Executive Committee has been to acknowledge AMLO’s right to appeal, but the PRI rejected a vote-by-vote recount.