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Opening the Mexican political system: Public opinion and the elections of 1994 and 1997

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Abstract

Over the past decade, the proliferation of election surveys has worked to undergird the electoral system in Mexico and to make electoral fraud more difficult. In the presidential elections of 1994, significant controversies arose as to survey methodologies, but by the congressional elections of 1997 the fierce debates over methodologies had subsided. Substantively, the surveys confirm the accuracy of the vote count in 1998, allow profiles of voters to be constructed for the three most important parties and mark declines in the support of the once dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional.

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Seymour Martin Lipset is Hazel Chair of Public Policy in the Public Policy Institute, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MSN 3C6 Fairfax, VA 22030, United States of America. Robert M. Worcester is the Chairman of MORI International, 32 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, United Kingdom.

Frederick C. Turner is Professor de Ciencia Política at the Universidad de San Andrés, Victoria, Argentina, and Vice President of the International Social Science Council in Paris. Address correspondence to: Carrera de Ciencia Política, Universidad de San Andrés, Vito Dumas 284 esq. Arias, (1644) Victoria Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The authors, as past presidents of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), visited Mexico, as guests of the newspaperExcelsior, during the weeks prior to the general elections of August, 1994. They would like to thank Francisco Abundis Luna, Miguel Basáñez, Jorge Buendía Laredo, Carlos A. Elordi, Rafael Giménez, Lauro Mercado Gasca, and two anonymous readers for thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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Lipset, S.M., Worcester, R.M. & Turner, F.C. Opening the Mexican political system: Public opinion and the elections of 1994 and 1997. St Comp Int Dev 33, 70–89 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02687492

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