To my surprise, the midterm elections south of the border changed little, as we see in  news reports:

Mexicans cast votes on Sunday for the 500-strong lower house as well as nine state governorships and more than 1,000 state and municipal posts in what was seen as a referendum on Pena Nieto's rule. The Senate was not up for renewal.   By Monday morning, with 85 percent of polling station returns in, preliminary results showed Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its allies in Congress had won almost 40 percent of the vote.

President Peña-Nieto came into the midterm with the usual incumbent blues that we've seen in the U.S. – e.g., Clinton '94, Bush '06, or Obama '10.  He was under fire for three big reasons:

1) The mishandling of reports about the deaths of 43 students.  The story really caught on and generated marches throughout the country.  He eventually admitted showing a lack of urgency and a bit of tone-deafness in the matter.

2) The conflict of interest stories about his wife's expensive home and a foreign company.  She was a very successful and very popular telenovela star and made lots of money before settling down as his wife.

3) The left's anger over energy reforms.  Peña-Nieto deserves credit for tackling a couple of sacred cows, the oil monopoly PEMEX and the corrupt teachers' unions.  The left has been in full rage ever since.

Nevertheless, I think that he must be feeling pretty good about the results.  It wasn't the kind of thumping that we've seen in U.S. midterm elections. 

There were a couple of interesting developments from election day:   

1) It was a very bad day for PRD, the leftist party.  They got just under 11% of the vote.

2) Nuevo León, the very important industrial and conservative state in the north, will have an independent governor, the self-described "El Bronco."  This is huge, because it sets him up as a presidential candidate in 2018.  He ran an outsider type of campaign, a bit similar to Perot '92.  We will keep an eye on him.  He will either succeed big or fail very badly.  It will have consequences either way.  

Last, but not least, let's congratulate Mexicans for voting.  The voters did their duty despite violence and a campaign to scare them by cartels and gangs.

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