1988 Mexican general election

General elections were held in Mexico on 6 July 1988. They were the first competitive presidential elections in Mexico since the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) took power in 1929. The elections were widely considered to have been fraudulent, with Salinas de Gortari and the PRI resorting to electoral tampering to remain in power.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari was declared the winner of the presidential election, with the Ministry of Interior saying he had received 50.7% of the vote. It was the lowest for a winning candidate since direct elections were introduced for the presidency in 1917; in all previous presidential elections, the PRI had faced no serious opposition and had won with percentages of votes well over 70%. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Institutional Revolutionary Party won 260 of the 500 seats, as well as winning 60 of the 64 seats in the Senate election.

Although early results of the parallel vote tabulation had indicated Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas was winning, when the official results were announced, Salinas was said to have won by a wide margin. All of the opposition candidates denounced that the elections had been rigged, and there were many protests throughout the country against the electoral fraud, including demonstrations by opposition lawmakers in the Congress. Salinas de Gortari, however, was able to take office on 1 December as President, after the PRI-dominated Congress declared that his election had been valid.