Mexican Standoff -- Calderon Looks like a Winner

Well, we are at the point right now where there is no announced winner to Mexico's election, but more and more it is looking like Felipe Calderon has beaten Antonio Manuel Lopez Obrador.

According to the most recent figures, Calderon leads AMLO by a slim margin of 1 percent, but which appears to be an unsurmountable 400,000 voters.

That tight margin, gives ammo to both PAN and PRD supporters to claim victory.

The argument the Panistas are making is that since they won such a small majority, there is no doubt that it is a fair election, the assumption being that election-stealing shenanigans take place early in the reporting and always give wide margins to the fraudulent "victor."

The PRDistas in turn are claiming victory, and sounded a little bellicose about the results so far.

Seems that the margin is tight, but Michael Barone, in his very detailed blog, seems to think that at this point statistically Calderon looks to be the winner.

On a related not, just saw on Univision that the PAN won a big percentage of the vote abroad. 54 percent IIRC.

I think this statement by Barone is a fitting conclusion:

In summary. This is one of the most astonishing and electrifying election nights I have ever witnessed. In a country which didn't have seriously contested elections from 1929 to 1994, we have just witnessed the culmination--or the beginning of the culmination--of one of the most closely and seriously contested elections in the history of major democratic nations in all time. Nobody I have encountered in covering this election had any serious confidence in predicting which candidate would win. And, it turns out, for good reason. This was--is--very, very close. You can infer from Lopez Obrador's and Calderon's statements between 11:00 and midnight that Lopez Obrador thought he probably lost and Calderon though he probably won. But probably. Given the close count, neither could be sure. Lopez Obrador was craftier, laying a predicate for claiming that the election was stolen. But his evidence was not overwhelming, and the seriousness of Ugalde, who is not a political appointee, cuts the other way. Lopez Obrador, characteristically, claimed the high moral ground as the advocate of the poor--but felt obliged to acknowledge that he recognizes the legitimate interests of all elements of society. He does not feel free to paint himself as another Hugo Chavez.