Opening the Mexican political system: Public opinion and the elections of 1994 and 1997

Over the past decade, the proliferation of election surveys has worked to u ndergird the electoral system in Mexico and to make electoral fraud more di fficult. In the presidential elections of 1994, significant controversies a rose as to survey methodologies, but by the congressional elections of 1997 the fierce debates over methodologies had subsided. Substantively, the sur veys confirm the accuracy of the vote count in 1998, allow profiles of vote rs to be constructed for the three most important parties, and mark decline s in the support of the once dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional.