Conservative Felipe Calderon emerged victorious in the Mexican presidential race in a razor thin victory, winning by 220,000 votes out of 41 million cast.

Calderon, a conservative who preached free-market values and financial stability during the campaign, was already reaching out to other parties to build a “unity government.” His opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, blamed fraud for his narrow loss in the vote count and called on his supporters to fill Mexico City’s main square Saturday in a show of force.

Yep, the leftist opponent is going to try to litigate his way to the presidency. You’d think this was a disappointed Democrat going for the White House.

Mexican stocks opened higher and the peso rebounded Thursday on news of Calderon’s apparent victory.

Yep, you’d think a Republican just won a close contest. Deja vu! I think it’s December 2000!

Other Ractions:

• Outside the Beltway quips:
  

  As we know from our own experience, whatever the outcome–even if the guy who “won” on the original count also “wins” on the recount–the losing side will never be satisfied with the election’s legitimacy. Therefore, I offer a modest proposal that should make everybody happy: They should give it to Al Gore.

• Q&O wonders:
  

  How do you say “Bush-Gore 2000″ in Spanish?

• Daimnation! ferrets out the Mexican version of the red/blue electoral map on the Christian Science Monitor website

• Lifelike Pundits also sees the Bush/Gore similarities:
  

  Remember, Bush won the official count in Florida, and Al Gore sued to have hand recounts in heavy Democrat districts and to have all overseas ballots thrown out. Expect something similar here.

• And as expected, Mark in Mexico has been following this story closely and is the best source of factual information:
  

  These results will be passed within the IFE to the magistrates’ tribunal, called the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF) where they will be reviewed for legality. The TEPJF will also adjudicate all the complaints and charges and counter-charges, so the outcome is still somewhat in doubt. AMLO has been demanding a full recount which the TEPJF can allow, but only under the most strict of circumstances. AMLO and the PRD have, so far, been demanding that the election laws be broken. I doubt that the TEPJF will permit this. The IFE has been quite right in asserting that if it allowed the sealed ballot packages to be opened, except as prescribed by law, the entire election could be annulled.

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  Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,
  Mexico,
  Mexican Politics,
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  Democrat Tactics in Mexico.