Guadalajara. Pablo Lemus Navarro, MOvimiento Ciudadano candidate for governor of Jalisco, won with a vote of between 42.5 and 45.1 percent as announced around 1 a.m. this Monday after the National Electoral Institute ( INE) released its quick count.
According to these data, Lemus would have prevailed over Claudia Delgadillo, standard bearer of the Let’s Make History coalition headed by Morena, who would have between 36.4 and 39.4 percent of the vote.
Third place would go to the representative of the PRI, PAN and PRD, Laura Haro, whose vote would be between 15.2 and 17 percent, according to the INE sampling carried out in 347 polling stations and whose certainty is around 95 percent.
Until that time, the Electoral Institute of Citizen Participation (IEPC) of Jalisco had not been able to present the quick count of the election for the governorship and the information from the Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) was flowing so slowly that the opposition political parties accused a worrying information gap.
The PREP began at eight at night and for two hours it did not capture any of the 10,917 installed boxes.
Until 10 at night, four hours after the closing of the voting centers, the first registration was made. But the fluidity of the figures advanced very slowly. At midnight they only had 169 cells captured, that is, 1.54 percent of the total.
The lack of a quick count in the first hours after the polls closed, added to the slowness of the PREP, generated suspicion and uncertainty about who really won the governorship, because the two leading candidates declared themselves winners just after voting day ended.
Pablo Lemus, candidate for governor for Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), stated shortly before 7 pm that he had won by 20 points, and Claudia Delgadillo said she was the winner with an advantage of almost 11 points.
The president of the IEPC, Paula Ramírez, justified the delay by pointing out that it was “a particularly complex election” in which “six elections had to be counted simultaneously” in each of the polling stations.
“The second reason is because we have a couple of coalitions both federally and locally. This meant that you could vote for more than 40 combinations of political parties that are part of these coalitions and this makes the accounting of the votes very difficult,” he said.
Questioned why information was not flowing only in Jalisco, when figures had already begun to be known in other entities with gubernatorial elections, Ramírez stated that “we have another journey to take, our minutes have to return to our district councils.”
Given the lack of information from the electoral body, both Lemus and Delgadillo not only declared themselves winners but also invited their supporters to celebrate the “triumph” at the La Minerva roundabout. But only Lemus arrived. No more than 200 people accompanied him as part of a discreet celebration in the absence of official certainty.
In a press conference, Delgadillo, candidate for governor of the coalition made up of Morena, PVEM, PT, Hagamos and Futuro, announced that her internal survey carried out by Mendoza and Blanco, gave her a vote of 46.4 percent, while His Citizen Movement contender, Pablo Lemus, reached 35.5 percent and Laura Haro of the PAN, PRI and PRD alliance 18.1 percent.
Together with the delegate of the National Executive Committee of the guinda party in the entity, Leonel Cota, and other candidates, he pointed out that the main municipalities of the entity won, including Guadalajara, where its standard bearer is the former PAN member José María Martínez.
When asked if he will accept the results of the IEPC, he pointed out that he will respect what the institute says, after calling on his polling station representatives to defend the vote.
Lemus arrived dancing at the MC headquarters and radiating happiness. In his message, the gubernatorial candidate said he had three surveys that gave him a 20-point advantage over his Morena contender.
Likewise, he noted that they took the most populated mayoralties, such as Guadalajara, Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, Tlajomulco and El Salto, and also the senatorial offices.
After highlighting that the election day was carried out in a climate of peace, he called on his contenders to turn the page.
“My government will be inclusive… with high vision and close to the people,” he added, accompanied by the Emecista state leadership and the candidates.
At noon, the IEPC reported that no serious incident had been reported so far. In district 16 of Tlaquepaque section 2546, the president of a polling station did not arrive, so the National Guard had to go to his home to recover the electoral material and be able to open the voting center at 10 in the morning.
