Three Perspectives on the 2025 Judicial Elections: Electoral Authority, Candidates and Public Opinion

Abstract

This article analyzes three perspectives on Mexico's first-ever judicial elections: that of the electoral authority, that of the participating candidates and that of public opinion. The judicial elections of June 2025 displayed a high degree of complexity and their analysis presents various possibilities, from the purpose and approval of the judicial reform to the INE's role in designing and organizing the event, defining criteria, registering candidacies, designing ballots, counting votes, applying affirmative action and gender parity measures and setting campaign regulations. This is compounded by the nonexistent electoral experience of the candidates and the limited information available to the electorate, which was poorly informed along various stages of the process according to several polls. The article analyzes the agreements, experiences and opinions regarding the judicial election process from these three perspectives: the architects of the rules of the game, the candidates and the voters. For the first, it analyzes the most relevant agreements within the INE; for the second, it analyzes the results of a survey conducted among the candidates; for the third, it analyzes surveys made to the public at large and the voters on election day, from which it draws an analysis of electoral conduct and voting decisions. Its purpose is to document the vision of these collective actors in order to point out certain successes and failures, real and perceived, and add to the understanding of electoral behavior in the first-ever judicial electoral process.