Coahuila, Results and Lessons: Alejandro Barrera
The PRI’s sweep in Coahuila confirms that Mexico’s north votes for results, not rhetoric: four lessons for the parties heading into 2027.
On Sunday, June 7, state elections were held in Coahuila to elect 16 deputies by relative majority and nine by proportional representation — a second test for the generational change in Morena’s national leadership.
The election delivered several surprises, the biggest being the overwhelming victory of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which swept all 16 contested districts in alliance with the local party Democratic Unity of Coahuila (UDC), defeating its closest rival, Morena and the Labor Party (PT), by a 3-to-1 margin — the second “consecutive” defeat in state elections since Andrés Manuel López Beltrán took over Morena’s Organization Secretariat, and the first defeat for Ariadna Montiel, who assumed the party’s national presidency upon the departure of Luisa María Alcalde.
It is also the second time Morena has been dealt a setback by a northern state: this past May, Morena failed in its attempt to destabilize the state of Chihuahua by busing acarreados — rented crowds — into the Estado Grande, as Chihuahua is known, disguised as protesters against the government of Maru Campos and her alleged collaboration with U.S. intelligence agencies.
Regardless of whatever Morena may say about this election day — from its classic cry of fraud, to claiming the PRI merely held ground without advancing, or that the defeat is insignificant because Coahuila represents 2% of the country’s population — the following lessons emerge:
1.- Once again, the so-called Fourth Transformation does not understand the ethos of work, self-realization and autonomy from the State that prevails across most of northern Mexico, where electioneering handouts disguised as social programs are neither a guarantee nor a shackle binding the vote to a political party — much less when the results are worse than those delivered by the party that governs today, in this case, the PRI.
2.- Nor has Morena understood that the discourse of weariness with past governments has expired now that they govern most of the country, which means people in other states have a track record of Morena governments to compare against their local reality when deciding whether or not voting for the Fourth Transformation is worth it.
3.- Politics is not a simple pendulum of affinities and aversions: rejection of the PRI or the PAN (in Chihuahua’s case) does not mean the population will flock en masse to Morena — and vice versa, rejection of Morena or the PRI does not turn the voter into a fervent PAN or MC supporter (both won less than 3% of the vote, fewer votes even than the local parties).
4.- Local politics is the key to winning nationally. While the PRI is the party with the worst reputation in the country, Manolo Jiménez, the state’s governor and a product of its ranks, has delivered tangible results on jobs and security, turning his state into an oasis of growth and governability in a region plagued by serious security problems, especially organized crime.
These are the lessons that the national leadership of the various parties (especially the opposition) must learn and take to heart if it seeks to regain ground and/or advance on the country’s electoral map ahead of the 2027 elections, the starting gun for the 2030 presidential race.
There is one more important lesson to learn and take to heart: no political movement is invincible, and power is neither eternal nor infinite — nor is it wielded or owned by the president (or former president) of the moment; power is wielded by the citizens, and the first thing citizens demand is results — results that can only be tangible, not mere mañanera speeches dictated from a ranch in Palenque.