Following the 6 July 2003 midterm election, Mexico has six nationally recognized political parties. National recognition is given to those parties that secure representation in Congress (effectively, a share of the popular vote greater than 2%).
Under Mexican law, parties are listed in the order in which they were first registered, thus:
- PAN: the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional) – the party that carried incumbent president Vicente Fox into power.
- PRI: the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) – in power, under different names, at the local, state, and national levels for most of the 20th century.
- PRD: the Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) – currently in power in the Federal District under Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
- PT: the Labour Party (Partido del Trabajo)
- PVEM: the Green Ecological Party of Mexico (Partido Verde Ecologista de México)
- Convergence: Convergencia
These parties are either defunct, nonofficial or informal, or operational only in individual states:
Other political parties and leaders
In the 19th century the two important parties were:
- Conservativos
- Liberales