How and when elections began to make sense. Some considerations about the political plurality in San Luis Potosí, 1991-2012

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to depict some characteristics of political change in the State of San Luis Potosí in the period 1991-2012. We consider that a substantial part of the process in this change has turned into the fulfillment of the elections that gradually, and with ups and downs, have allowed that, with the exercise of the suffrage, citizens configure a distribution of political power in a growing way of competition. The research includes the analysis of Governor, Legislators (diputados) and Local Governments (Ayuntamientos) in the referred period. The basis of the study resides in the identification of different winners of representation charges through time, and as a result, a diversity of phenomena are identified and discussed throughout this paper. However, the most relevant goal of this article has to do with the increase of electoral competition in the federal entity, which was reflected in a complex and changing distribution of political power. A framework of rules and institutions was built in this state, and it led the different political trends of society into the democratic route. This situation had as a result that party preferences of citizens could be expressed in a more genuine way than they were in prior times, which allowed that the evaluations of electors included a diversity of elements, such as the functioning of their governments and their expectations that in different campaigns candidates projected to future, defining the direction of their votes.