1988 Mexican general election

1988 Mexican general election

6 July 1988
Presidential election
← 1982 1994 →
Turnout	52.01% ( 22.83pp)
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 Vote % 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 Vote % 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 the PRI resorting to electoral tampering to remain in power.

PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari was proclaimed the winner of the presidential election, with the Ministry of Interior reporting he received 51% of the vote. It was the lowest for a winning candidate since direct presidential elections were inaugurated in 1917; in all previous presidential elections, the PRI faced no serious opposition and won with well over 70% of the vote.^[2] In the Chamber of Deputies election, the PRI won 260 of the 500 seats,^[3] as well as winning 60 of the 64 seats in the Senate election.^[4]

Although early results from the parallel vote tabulation indicated that Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas was leading, when the official results were published, Salinas de Gortari was claimed to have won by a large margin. All of the opposition candidates decried the rigged elections, and there were numerous rallies across the country, including those by opposition MPs in Congress. However, Salinas de Gortari was allowed to take office as President on December 1 after the PRI-dominated Congress ruled his election legitimate.^[5]