Civil War, Or Not

Mexican Elections today, results shortly.

If the left-wing, and advocate of forced redistribution of wealth Obrador wins, and he demonstrates the Hugo Chavez/Fidel Castro like tendencies he has been accused of, Civil War and calls for secession by the Mexican states that border the United States will be a real possibility.

Watching local TV News they mentioned that out of an estimated 10Million eligible voters residing in the United States (what illegal immigration problem?), only 32,000 sent in absentee ballots to have their say in who leads their homeland. One person interviewed claimed the Mexican government made every step of the process too difficult, presumably with the subtext being that they are allowing voters residing in the USA to vote absentee as a matter of political rhetoric and not fact.

Whichever candidate wins, they will have limited and mostly regional support (the leftist candidate garners support from the south and Mexico City, the less leftist (it's very inaccurate to call Calderon conservative, at least by our standards) candidate enjoys strong support in the north. Calderon may see some support from real conservatives bleed off to the actual conservative candidate, Campos, just as Obrador has an even more leftist candidate, Patricia Mercado, who could siphon off some of the real commies who might have otherwise voted for Obrador. Madrazo of the old PRI is a wild-card, given that despite decades of misrule and corruption, the PRI still might appeal to some folks in Mexico.

If things start to really fall apart south of the border, I would imagine the current illegal immigration crisis will become a very real, and far larger, refugee crisis, with the violence being exported north along with the people.

Regardless, interesting times.

UPDATE:

Drudge Headline: MEXICAN STAND-OFF ELECTION TOO CLOSE TO CALL (predictably tabloid-y, you have to love Mr. Drudge)

Meanwhile, Instapundit links to Mark from Mexico with updates of numbers and commentary, and Gateway Pundit with his own impressions and links.

So what is Spanish for Ohio, or Florida? (whichever side loses, will probably claim widespread fraud, it's de rigueur in elections now to do so)

(and in this case, they might be right, corruption isn't unknown in Mexico, and zealots in both the main parties will be tempted to assist their side in any way possible)

TV Azteca has the results, broken down by region for president, and the support for PAN's is overwhelming throughout the northern states (the Western Northern States here, and the Eastern Northern States, here), with its candidate garnering around half the votes in nearly every state, with even the reviled PRI outpolling the PRD candidate. They hate the idea of reversing NAFTA and shutting down trade with the USA, which Obrador has been accused of threatening to do. Results are nearly as lopsided for the lefties in the South and surrounding Mexico City.

UPDATE within an UPDATE: Didn't notice that the links I was including all take you to the front page of the election results and not the results of individual states divided by region (circunscripción in Spanish, I think it means region). To get to where I meant to guide you with the links, click on the results for Presidente, then click on the corresponding region of the map, circunscripción 1 is the Western half of the Northern States, circunscripción 2 is the Eastern half of the Northern States, circunscripción 4 is Mexico City and surrounding states, and circunscripción 5 is the Southern portion, mostly the Yucatan peninsula (note to web page designers, if you breakdown results into smaller and more detailed bits, make it easy to directly link to those bits, given that the ads are the same, and all the link backs to the original page are there (or should be there) you aren't losing anything by making it convenient for others to point to what they want to point to).

Whichever candidate wins, hopefully the losers will accept the results and not exploit the regional divide, you know, just like here in the USA.

(possibly the last sentence contains some sarcasm)

Also, expect a PRD - Obrador victory to be spun by our media as a repudiation of Pres. Bush, and should PAN - Calderon win, well, clearly if Pres. Bush hadn't fumbled on the border issues, the vote wouldn't have even been close, either way expect the NYT and LAT to suggest that the vote results mean bad news for Pres. Bush.