2000 Mexican general election

PRI candidate Francisco Labastida led in nearly all the polls throughout the first months of the campaign, although in the final two months his lead grew smaller; on the other hand, PAN candidate Vicente Fox was at second place in most of the polls, but in May and June his percentage of supporters increased and he led in many of the final polls.

Given that the overwhelming majority of the polls failed to predict Fox's victory and instead had indicated that Labastida would win by comfortable margins, it has been asserted that many of those polled lied about their preferences, fearing that if they stated support for an opposition party, they would be stripped by the PRI of the government assistance programs they were receiving. Indeed, the Reforma newspaper, which had predicted a Labastida victory in all of the polls they published during the campaign, attributed their mistake to the so-called fear factor.[4]

Some isolated incidents of irregularities and problems were reported. For example, one irregularity in the southern state of Campeche involved the European Union electoral observer Rocco Buttiglione and could have created problems for President Ernesto Zedillo had the PRI candidate won. Overall, however, electoral observers identified little evidence that those incidents were centrally coordinated (as opposed to led by local PRI officials), and critics concluded that those irregularities which did occur did not materially alter the outcome of the presidential vote, which had been more definitive than expected.

Civic organizations fielded more than 80,000 trained electoral observers, foreign observers were invited to witness the process, and numerous "quick count" operations and exit polls (not all of them independent) validated the official vote tabulation. The largest exit poll was organized by the U.S. firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, financed by a hitherto obscure outfit in Dallas called Democracy Watch. It emerged later that Democracy Watch had effectively been created by Vicente Fox campaign insiders to help prevent the success of any expected election fraud.

Numerous electoral reforms implemented since 1989 aided in the opening of the Mexican political system, and since then opposition parties have made historic gains in elections at all levels. The chief electoral concerns shifted from outright fraud to campaign fairness issues and, between 1995 and 1996, the political parties negotiated constitutional amendments to address these issues. The legislation implemented included major points of consensus that had been worked out with the opposition parties. Under the new laws, public financing predominated over private contributions to political parties, procedures for auditing parties were tightened, and the authority and independence of the electoral institutions were strengthened. The court system was also given greatly expanded authority to hear civil rights cases on electoral matters brought by individuals or groups. In short, the extensive reform efforts of the 1990s "leveled the playing field" for the parties.

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  Fox campaign items.
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  Cárdenas and Fox campaign buttons.
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  Labastida campaign buttons.
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  Fox campaign watches.
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  Fox campaign bottles
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  Camacho Solís and Bartlett (as PRI presidential pre-candidate) campaign buttons.