We have some more final numbers for each of the key Mexican races from Sunday’s election, and in each case, it suggests that Mexico was warier than polls suggested about returning the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) — the party that governed Mexico for 71 years until 2000 — to power.  Furthermore, the results suggest Mexicans, under the right circumstances, may be turning to the left and, above all, the leftist  Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) may, like so often in its recent history, have lost a key opportunity to win real power in Mexico.

When you look to the congressional races and the key gubernatorial races too, there’s reason to believe that at each turn, the PRI hasn’t won quite the sweeping victory that it once expected, and in many ways, the PRD and even the center-right, ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) over performed from expectations.

Presidential Election.  Enrique Peña Nieto, the PRI’s candidate has won with just 38.15% to 31.64% for the PRD’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).  The candidate of the PAN, Josefina Vázquez Mota, trails with 25.40%.  Gabriel Quadri de la Torre of the Partido Nueva Alianza (PANAL), won 2.30%. Vázquez Mota managed to win a handful of states in the north-central Mexico (unlike the PRI’s 2006 presidential candidate, whose third-place finish was much more devastating), the manufacturing and industry headland that has always been the PAN’s stronghold.  Likewise, López Obrador carried many of Mexico’s southern states and the Distrito Federal.

What is so striking is that Peña Nieto’s lead was not the double-digit lead most polls suggested, but just 6.5%.  It suggests to me that the PRD made a colossal mistake in nominating López Obrador, with all of his baggage — voters remained wary of someone they suspected remained an old-line statist leftist and he never quite shook the unpopularity that he developed from the months of protests following his very narrow loss in the 2006 election.  It seems unmistakable that the outgoing head of government of the Distrito Federal, Marcero Ebrard, would have presented a much more moderate campaign and may well have given Peña Nieto a real campaign, if not overtaken the PRI’s candidate altogether.  It was a clear missed opportunity for the PRD in renominating López Obrador.

Even today, López Obrador has refused to concede defeat amid what he calls more corruption and fraud than in 2006, is asking for a full recount, and is likely already turning off moderate voters in what Mexico’s political elite fear will be a rerun of the months of protests that followed the 2006 election.  Although he may have some valid points, notwithstanding his closer-than-expected result, it seems unlikely that a recount could make up 6.5% of the total vote.

Above all, the rise of Peña Nieto indicated more disapproval for the PAN, and the Calderón administration in particular, than any love or nostalgia for the PRI.  A modern, competent PRD effort could have well caught fire.

Distrito Federal.  Miguel Ángel Mancera, as expected, won the race for head of government in the federal district — essentially, the governor/mayor of Mexico City.  The PRD’s candidate won with 63.56% to less than 20% for his nearest competitor, the PRI’s Beatriz Paredes, a former PRI president from 2007 to 2011 and governor of Tlaxcala from 1987 to 1992, continuing the PRD’s winning streak since the position was created and the first such election held in 1997.

Mancera, who was the attorney general of the DF during the Ebrard administration, may well now become a national star, alongside Ebrard, who is now awkwardly out of a job, but remains the frontrunner, for now, to be the PRD candidate for president in 2018 — what an absolute change from the potential alternative universe where Ebrard would have won the 2012 election.  Six years is a long time in any country’s politics, and certainly the PAN will be working to rehabilitate its image over the next six years as well, while the PRI will be working hard to demonstrate that it is trustworthy in Mexico’s fragile democratic system and more effective than under the PAN’s Vicente Fox and Calderón.  So there’s no guarantee that either Ebrard or Mancera are destined to emerge as a frontrunner in 2018 — it may well be that Ebrard’s moment was 2012.

Tabasco.  The PRI appears to have lost the governorship of this south-central, Gulf-region oil-wealthy Mexican state for the first time in over 80 years is a bit of a surprise, with the current PRI governor already talking about responsible handovers.  The PRI had been accused of fraud in 1994 when López Obrador lost the gubernatorial race here to future PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo, as well as in subsequent years; in 2000, Mexico’s federal election tribunal actually annulled the election, so widespread was the electoral fraud.

Despite every expectation that the PRI would continue to steamroll to victory (legitimately or not), the PRD’s federal senator Arturo Núñez Jiménez won 51.3% to just 43.7% for the PRI’s candidate, Jesús Alí de la Torre, mayor of Villahermosa.

Not only was the win a strong showing for the PRD in López Obrador’s home state, but it marked the first time in the state’s history that the PRI will not govern it — a staggering indication that, even while some Mexicans worry that Mexican democracy will backslide with the PRI’s return to Los Pinos, we can also point to the deepening of Mexican democracy far off in the hinterlands where it had previously been less than robust.

Morelos.  In this small state just south of Mexico City, the PAN had long been seen as losing its hold on the governorship, which it had held since 2000.  But instead of turning to the PRI’s candidate, Morelos has elected Graco Ramírez Garrido Abreu, the PRD candidate, with 43.3% to just 34.7% for the PRI.