Amid deadly violence and a climate of dissatisfaction among many of the nation's voters, Mexico will hold midterm elections on Sunday, June 7th.
In the days leading to the voting there have been clashes as groups opposed to what they deem are corrupt and ineffective elections have burned ballots and tried to occupy government buildings. This has been the case in several regions including Guerrero and Ayotzinapa, where a group of 43 teachers' college students were taken by local authorities working with criminal gangs and presumably killed.
So far, 21 people linked to the upcoming elections have been killed, including one mayoral candidate who was beheaded; the incidents are presumably at the hands of organized crime, Telemundo's Raúl Torres reports.
Mexico's National Electoral Institute (INE in Spanish) spokesperson Jaime Córdova assured Mexicans in a press conference that voting would not be compromised, though INE did say there could be voter difficulties in 6,000 out of 68,000 voting places.
Though the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is expected to win the majority of Congressional seats, the PRI might lose some of its dominance in several of Mexico's states, as gubernatorial candidates have gained significant traction by campaigning against institutional corruption, violence and economic sluggishness.
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In the state of Nuevo León - whose capital Monterrey is the home to some of the country's top companies - gubernatorial candidate Jaime "El Bronco" Rodriguez may become the first state governor in modern Mexico running as an independent with no political party. One of the latest polls by Mexico's newspaper "El Universal" showed Rodriguez in a virtual tie with the PRI candidate Ivonne Alvarez.
Mexican political analyst Verónica Ortiz O. wrote in a Wilson Center analysis that expected results in 7 out of 9 Mexican states are too close to call.
