Political divisions (States) of Mexico

The United Mexican States are a federation of thirty-one free and sovereign states, which form a union that exercises a degree of jurisdiction over the Federal District and other territories.

Each state has its own constitution, congress, and a judiciary, and its citizens elect by direct voting a governor for a six-year term, and representatives to their respective unicameral state congresses for three-year terms.

The Federal District is a special political division that belongs to the federation as a whole and not to a particular state, and as such, has more limited local rule than the nation’s states.

The states are divided into municipalities, the smallest administrative political entity in the country, governed by a mayor or municipal president (Presidente municipal), elected by its residents by plurality.

Mexican states by political party

The elections in each state are done at different times, depending on the state, and are not necessarily held at the same time with the federal elections.

Currently, even though the PRI is the third political force in the Congress of the Union, in terms of number of seats, it is still the first political force in terms of the number of states governed by it. As of 2010:

• PRI governs 20 states: Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Colima, Durango, Hidalgo, México, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Yucatán and Zacatecas
• PAN governs 7 estates: Baja California, Baja California sur, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Morelos, Sonora and Tlaxcala
• PRD governs 3 states and the Federal District (Mexico City): Chiapas, Distrito Federal, Guerrero and Michoacán
• Convergencia governs a state: Oaxaca