President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party, along with two smaller allied parties, won a majority in Mexico's lower house in midterm elections
MEXICO CITY—President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party, along with two smaller allied parties, won a majority in the country’s lower house in midterm elections on Sunday, but fell well short of a two-thirds majority needed to carry out a more ambitious agenda of economic nationalism.
The president’s National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, and its two allied parties won between 265 and 292 seats in the 500 seat lower house, according to a quick count by the country’s election agency. The quick count is a representative sample of votes across the country. The coalition fell short of a two-thirds supermajority, which will make it unlikely the president can overhaul Mexico’s Constitution. The leftist has said he would seek to change the constitution to boost government control over the energy sector, possibly undoing a landmark 2013 energy overhaul that opened up the oil and electricity sectors to private investors.
“What is at stake is whether López Obrador will have free hands the rest of his term, or whether Mexicans will establish some checks and balances in the president’s power,” said Jesús Silva-Herzog, a political-science professor at Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey university., Mr. Silva-Herzog said. It will also gauge whether Mexico’s opposition parties can recover their footing after the populists’ landslide presidential win in 2018 sent them into disarray.