Photo: Shutterstock

By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS

Despite extensive campaigns across Mexico’s capital aimed at gaining and maintaining control over its 32 precincts in the midterm elections on Sunday, June 6, preliminary vote counts indicate that the leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) lost territory as a result of the polling.

Morena, founded by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as a platform to promote his populist agenda and create a nationwide that would allow him to push through his Fourth Transformation (4T) restructuring of the Mexican economy and political system, also lost ground in the Mexican Congress, making it harder for AMLO to dictate passage of his initiatives.

Mexican Electoral Councilor Mario Velázquez reported Monday, June 7, that in Sunday’s election, Morena, which had controlled the Azcapotzalco, Álvaro Obregón, Cuauhtémoc and Tlalpan since 2015, had lost these predominantly middle-class districts to the National Action Party (PAN)-Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) alliance, according to quick-count  results.

At the same time, the upscale Miguel Hidalgo Precinct, which Morena snatched away from the PAN in 2018, will again be controlled by the National Action Party, and the Magdalena Contreras Precinct will return to the PRI.

Morena and its allies will maintain six precincts, including Venustiano Carranza, which in 2018 was won by the PRD, Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, Gustavo A. Madero, Milpa Alta and Tláhuac.

Meanwhile, the triparty alliance will maintain the precincts of Cuajimalpa and Benito Juárez.

As of Monday afternoon, the race to control the precinct of Xochimilco remained too close to tell.