The National Action Party (PAN) flies its lowest hours since it won the Presidency in 2000, when it also had eight governors, 206 federal deputies and 45 senators. Two decades later, he faces the 2024 succession route with five state leaders, 114 seats and 23 seats.
The fragility of the blue and whites was recognized last weekend by former president Felipe Calderón,who made a call to open your eyes to the political reality facing the party: “and that the PAN understands, as I have said several times, that if they do not open they will end up alone, small as they are, persecuted and imprisoned.”
The difficulties were also noted by his top-ranked presidential candidate in the polls, Senator Lilly Téllez.who asked his co-religionists not to be ashamed of representing a “modern right”, because “the only anti-AMLO vote is not enough to defeat the monster, the challenge is greater.”
A review of the electoral figures of the PAN, performed by MILLENNIUM, shows that the highest flight hours of this party were in 2017, when it had 11 governorships; 2000 and 2006, years in which, in addition to winning the Presidency, they obtained 206 federal deputations —on both occasions—, and in 2006 itself, when they reached 55 senators, their historical maximum.
Commenting on the results of the June 6, 2021 elections, national leader Marko Cortés considered them a success for his organization and its allies, PRI and PRD, and warned President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that “bread It will be very solid as a parliamentary faction”.
In reality, the current PAN bench of deputies — which emerged from those elections — is the second smallest in almost three decades. Only the previous one was less, as a consequence of the 2018 amloist tsunami. And if in 2021 he achieved a modest recovery, it was not because he won more votes (in reality he lost them: he obtained nine million, while in the previous legislative elections he reached 10; and in percentage of the total valid vote it rose just three tenths, from 18.6 to 18.9), but because the contribution of its allies allowed it to achieve some victories.
In addition, in territorial power -the states it controls-, the blue and white returned to its levels of the 20th century, falling from his maximum of 11 governorships, which he reached in 2017 by being the first beneficiary of the PRI’s collapse, to seven victories in 2021 and five in 2022. He lost more than half in just five years, to be where he was before he arrived to Los Pinos: in 1997 it controlled six states; in 1995, four, and in 1994, three.
The nine million votes that the PAN obtained in the 2021 legislative elections are within the party’s usual range in this type of election., when they do not coincide with the presidential ones. The floor was established at 7.8 million, in 1997, and the ceiling at 9.7 million, in 2009.
The problem is that, in the 24 years that passed until 2021, its voters in midterm elections did not growwhile the population and the electorate did: the total valid vote in 1997 was 29 million and that of 2021 was 47 million.
Hence their percentage of the vote in legislative elections that do not coincide with the presidential ones fell from 26.6 percent in 1997 to 18.9 in the most recent.
National participation rises whenever ownership of the Executive Power is at stake, and consequently increases the numerical votes received by the parties.
The best legislative result of the PAN is that of 2000when it almost doubled its vote volume: from the 7.8 million of the previous elections to 14.3 million.
This success is usually attributed to Vicente Fox, who got 16 million in the presidential election. But, in reality, the benefit that the then candidate of the useful vote brought them was not that great. In 2006, Felipe Calderón also had more votes than his party’s list of deputies, with 15 million compared to 13.8 million. In contrast, in 2012, the vote for Josefina Vázquez Mota was lower than that of her aspirants for legislators, with 12.7 million and 13.2 million.
In legislative elections coinciding with the presidential ones, therefore, the PAN rank was placed from 2000 to 2012 between a ceiling of 14.3 million and a floor of 13.2 million. The difference is much greater when considering the percentages, however: going from 39 points to 27.3, he had a sharp drop.
That in 2018 it was dramatic, when the list of deputies that accompanied Ricardo Anaya plummeted below the range, to 10 million and 18.6 percent.
lost bastions
The “solid” parliamentary fraction that Marko Cortés proclaimed in 2021 is a shadow of that of 2006, at the top of the PAN legislative power, with 114 deputies and 23 senators today, compared to 206 and 52 then.
The same occurs with its territorial domain: the five states it governs correspond to only part of its historical strongholds, three in the Bajío region (Guanajuato, Querétaro and Aguascalientes), one in the south (Yucatán) and another in the north ( Chihuahua).
In the other part of its traditional state bases, moreover, PANism is in ruins: Morena swept it from the northwest (from Baja California to Sinaloa) and Tamaulipas. Meanwhile, MC removed him from Jalisco (the PAN was thrown to fourth place in the 2018 elections) and from Nuevo León (pushed to third place in 2021).
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