Country profile
Mexico
Estados Unidos Mexicanos
North America · Latin America and the Caribbean · Americas
MX · MEX
- Capital
- Mexico City
- Population
- 130,575,786
- Area
- 1,964,375 km²
- Democracy index
- 53
- Regime type
- Hybrid Regime
Events
Ballots from Mexico
The latest elections, referendums, and opinion polls from Mexico. Community totals are not official results.
No published ballots yet
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Classification
Democracy profile
The score and regime label are assigned by Porto Voto using our in-house democracy index and classification framework, not ratings from governments or external agencies.
Democracy index
53/100
Regime type
Hybrid Regime
Mexico operates as a hybrid regime characterized by the gradual erosion of democratic check and balance systems amidst rising executive centralization under the ruling Morena party. While competitive multi party elections remain functional and are administered by a professional electoral bureaucracy, the broader political playing field is increasingly uneven. Systemic state pressures, sustained legislative attacks on autonomous regulatory bodies, and major structural changes targeting the independence of the federal judiciary have combined to undermine institutional resistance to executive authority. Civil rights, journalistic pluralism, and freedom of expression have dropped significantly due to frequent harassment and state hostility toward independent media. Most critically, the territorial expansion and political intimidation exercised by organized crime networks have severely compromised the security of local candidates, resulting in an encapsulated democracy where national mechanisms persist while large swaths of the territory lack authentic, uncoerced political competition.
Last evaluation:
How we classify regimes →World Factbook
Country background
A concise introduction to Mexico, together with notes on how power and law are organized, to put local ballots in context.
Mexico was the site of several advanced Amerindian civilizations -- including the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya, and Aztec -- until Spain conquered and colonized the area in the early 16th century. Administered as the Viceroyalty of New Spain for three centuries, it achieved independence early in the 19th century. Elections held in 2000 marked the first time since Mexican Revolution in 1910 that an opposition candidate -- Vicente FOX of the National Action Party (PAN) -- defeated the party in government, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
He was succeeded in 2006 by another PAN candidate Felipe CALDERON, but Enrique PEÑA NIETO regained the presidency for the PRI in 2012. Left-leaning anti-establishment politician and former mayor of Mexico City (2000-05) Andrés Manuel LÓPEZ OBRADOR, from the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), became president in 2018. The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, or T-MEC by its Spanish acronym) entered into force in 2020 and replaced its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Mexico amended its constitution in 2019 to facilitate the implementation of the labor components of USMCA. Mexico is currently the US's second-largest goods trading partner, after Canada. Ongoing economic and social concerns include low real wages, high underemployment, inequitable income distribution, and few advancement opportunities, particularly for the largely indigenous population in the impoverished southern states.
Since 2007, Mexico's powerful transnational criminal organizations have engaged in a struggle to control criminal markets, resulting in tens of thousands of drug-related homicides and forced disappearances.