The 2006 Mexican Elections: Manifestation of a Divided Society?

central cleavage that defined Mexican politics in the last 15 years of the twentieth century— pro-regime vs. anti-regime—could no longer guide voters on Election Day. With no PRI to vote out of office ~or to defend!, Mexicans were impelled to turn their political attention to non-regime issues, such as economic policy, social policy, relations with the United States, and crime control. As Kathleen Bruhn and Kenneth Greene make clear in their contribu-tion to this symposium, Mexican political elites are seriously divided on these issues, while the views of their bases are not far apart. The issues that animate Mexican political debate may nevertheless arise from important social divisions at the mass level. Were there profound differences in the support bases in social groups among the three main parties and three major presidential candidates in 2006? Did social groups with opposing interests on matters of public policy line up behind the par-ties and candidates who most clearly repre-sented their interests? A prevalent line of analysis posits a “blue-yellow divide ” that geo-graphically divides Mexico, much akin to the “red state-blue state divide ” trumpeted by the media in recent U.S. elections. In this view, the nation separates int