PLoS ONE (Jan 2013)

Results on three predictions for July 2012 federal elections in Mexico based on past regularities.

  • H Hernández-Saldaña

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082584
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 12
p. e82584

Abstract

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The Presidential Election in Mexico of July 2012 has been the third time that PREP, Previous Electoral Results Program works. PREP gives voting outcomes based in electoral certificates of each polling station that arrive to capture centers. In previous ones, some statistical regularities had been observed, three of them were selected to make predictions and were published in arXiv:1207.0078 [physics.soc-ph]. Using the database made public in July 2012, two of the predictions were completely fulfilled, while, the third one was measured and confirmed using the database obtained upon request to the electoral authorities. The first two predictions confirmed by actual measures are: (ii) The Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI, is a sprinter and has a better performance in polling stations arriving late to capture centers during the process. (iii) Distribution of vote of this party is well described by a smooth function named a Daisy model. A Gamma distribution, but compatible with a Daisy model, fits the distribution as well. The third prediction confirms that errare humanum est, since the error distributions of all the self-consistency variables appeared as a central power law with lateral lobes as in 2000 and 2006 electoral processes. The three measured regularities appeared no matter the political environment.