Mexico’s presidential election and run-off system

I want to bring up the issue of the introduction of the run-off system in Mexico’s presidential election, especially to solve the problem in this article.

Mexico’s presidential election has no run-off system and is held with congressional election concurrently. From these electoral rules, we can make two expectations. First, the no run-off system would make it difficult to give a majority victory to the winner. Second, congressional elections will enjoy a honeymoon effect with the presidential election. It will be beneficial for forming a majority or at least larger share in congressional level. Therefore, the reality will be the combination of these two conflicting effects.

According to this article, 2006 presidential election in Mexico showed that the gap between two top rival candidates was too narrow and finally it went to the legal judgments. That process had caused the enormous political instability at that time. In fact, there is always a possibility of such an extreme competition in any election.

However, in case of Mexico, I think this extreme competition, even though it is not frequently occurred, could be avoided by the introduction of run-off system. Given that Mexico’s party system is composed of 3 main parties which are PRI, PAN, PRD, the run-off system could deter this extreme competition by increasing the possibility of the coalition among two of them at the final stage. Not only for this purpose, the run-off system will contribute to form a majority government and therefore increase the governability in Mexico’s politics.

However, we have a consideration when we try to introduce the run-off system. This is the effect of current concurrent election system. Concurrent election system plays an important role to reduce the post-presidential election turmoil by making voters give their support to the winnable party and therefore the candidate could have stable support in congress. Parties also have an incentive to form coalition to obtain voters’ support which will concentrate on the winnable party in the presidential election. In reality, PAN had a largest share in congress in 2006 congressional election, which the system intends to work even though there was a legal debate about the result of the presidential election itself and more fundamental problem that PAN still had not a majority.

We need to think of the combination effect between the run-off system and concurrent election. I think both system could be somewhat conflicting in terms of coalition formation. The run-off system will not be effective in coalition formation at the first stage because most candidates have an incentive to run in the first run, which could reduce the effect of coalition formation from the concurrent election. I want to bring up this matter to discuss. How do you think of it?

Related article

http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7887909