The reading of the result of the mid-term elections on June 6 is that the ruling party was consolidated although it did not achieve its maximum objectives; at the same time, the opposition showed its weakness. From this combination it emerges that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador will have a great opportunity in the next three years to prepare the ground for a successor to overcome the opposition in the 2024 presidential elections.

In these elections two major alliances faced with each other. On the one hand, the ruling party Juntos Hacemos Historia, which was made up of Morena - López Obrador's party -, Partido del Trabajo y Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico. On the other side, the PAN, the PRD and the traditional PRI joined in Va por México. On the other side, four parties with little electoral weight competed. Hacemos Historia added 43% of the votes, while VxM reached 40%. Relative parity, however, is misleading. The electoral system for the representatives combines the electoral system for 200 councils that are distributed by proportional representation in five districts, with the dispute for 300 positions that are elected one for each electoral district by simple majority. Morena and allies won in 186 districts; however, three years earlier, with the electoral boost that drove López Obrador's presidential candidacy, they won in 220 districts.

It still remains to be known how the distribution of the 200 councils that are distributed proportionally will be, but everything indicates that the ruling party will not reach the 308 seats in total that it achieved in 2018. This means that although it will reach an absolute majority (more than half of the representatives), it will not have a qualified majority, for which it requires 334 representatives.

On the opposition side, VxM won in 108 districts. The result represents a great leap compared to what was achieved in 2018 when the same three protagonists had only obtained 56 district victories, although the PRI did not go with the PAN and the PRD, but split into another electoral alliance that no longer exists. The biggest leap was achieved by the PAN, which went from winning 40 districts in 2018 to winning 70 this year.

Government departments. Hacemos Historia achieved a surprising turn in the results for the government departments. 15 were disputed, of which only one was directed by Morena, Baja California. The government party reached 11 victories: it took Baja California Sur and Nayarit from the PAN; from the PRI, Sonora, Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Colima, Guerrero, Tlaxcala and Campeche. Michoacán from the PRD. And it retained Baja California.

The result is that the ruling party now governs in half of the Mexican states, which gives it a territorial platform to develop its policy that it lacked in the previous three years. And this growth comes at the expense of their opponents.

A singular case was the outcome of the elections of the districts that make up Mexico City. Half of the mayoralties were won by the opposition, which considered this result as decisive. Although it does not reach that degree, due to the weight of the results in the rest of the country, it is true that voting there is a factor that could mark a future trend in the sense of urban middle classes that move away from the government and move closer to the opposition.

The future. Without two-thirds of the Representatives, the ruling party will not be able to modify the constitution and the so-called Cuarta Transformación will be left without the milestone that would underpin it in the history of Mexico. However, political consultants assess that with what it obtained in these elections it has enough to try strong legal changes that strengthen that political space.

In this sense, some of these think tanks already predict a rupture in VxM that the PRI would lead, which came out of the elections very weakened and could be seduced by some of the proposals of Hacemos Historia. Among these are the strengthening of federal power faced wiht the government departments both through a tax reform and through a concentration of power with the elimination of constitutional bodies such as the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT (Telecom regulator), a proposal that in the electoral campaign generated a lot of noise, especially from the private sector that operates in that value chain.

The precariousness of the opposition led to the fact that immediately after the electoral results were known, PAN chiefs came out to warn that losing governorships to win mayoralties (for those of Mexico City) was not useful if the PAN wanted to return to the National Palace, where it already was hand in hand with Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. "We are light years away from being the opposition that is needed to build a national political project that wins the 2024 presidential elections", said Senator Gustavo Madero in an interview with Forbes. And he predicted seismic movements in VxM: “The sooner they happen, the better; that's how we take off the ballast and start the race firmly. It won't be easy”, he concluded.