Mexico's left-of-center candidate should have won the country's presidential election, according to preliminary research by U.S. and Mexican math and science experts.
Using the government's own statistics, experts using different models concluded that there were patterns indicating that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the candidate for the Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD, was going to win.
Depending on which research model is considered, Lopez Obrador had an advantage of nearly 8 percent to 12 percent over Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, the presumed winner.
Although Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute declared Peña Nieto the winner of the July 1 election, people who are unhappy with the results are circulating petitions requesting an investigating into alleged vote-buying and other irregularities.
One such petition is on the Internet at gopetition.com, and it includes the name of El Pasoan Jesus Hilario and other Texans.
Lopez Obrador stated last week that he plans to challenge the election results.


Jorge Lopez Gallardo, a physics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, said Mexico's "exceptional" voting stations provide the most compelling argument that Lopez Obrador might have bested Peña Nieto.
The Mexican federal election agency set up 950 exceptional voting stations throughout the country so that eligible voters who were away from their home districts on July 1 could cast ballots. The agency reported that 593,739 voters cast ballots at the exceptional voting stations.
Tabulations by César García Bojórquez, a chemical engineer in Sonora state, and other associates showed that Lopez Obrador's party received 244,312 of the votes (41 percent), while Peña Nieto's party garnered 166,845 votes (28 percent). Josefina Vazquez Mota, the National Action Party candidate, came in close behind Peña Nieto with 27.8 percent of the exceptional station votes.
"The results from the exceptional voting stations are more accurate than any pre-election poll or survey," said UTEP's Lopez, who's published two books on Mexican elections and is not related to the candidate Lopez Obrador.
"People who voted at the exceptional voting stations are representative of Mexico's citizenry, and the stations were located in different regions with different political party leanings," Lopez said.
Garcia and Eduardo Reyes Cartagena, another analyst in Mexico who helped with the election research, found that as few as 27 and as many as 932 people voted at the exceptional voting stations.
Gerardo Ortigoza, a professor at the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico, used a different model for his analysis of the election.
Ortigoza, a prominent mathematician with a doctorate in math from the University of Minnesota, predicted that Lopez Obrador would have 37.9 percent of the total votes cast; Peña Nieto, 30.7 percent; and Vazquez Mota, 27.9 percent.
Ortigoza stunned Veracruz officials when he accurately predicted the outcome of a contested legislative race in his state, with figures that contradicted a prominent pollsters findings.
Pre-election polls commissioned by major media in Mexico had Peña Nieto leading against Lopez Obrador by double digits, prompting some hand-wringing over the polls after the election ended with a narrower margin between the top two candidates.
Mexican election officials said Peña Nieto won with 38.2 percent of the votes, Lopez Obrador came in second with 31.50 percent, Vazquez Mota had 25.41 percent, and Gabriel Quadri, the fourth candidate, had 2.29 percent.
One of the complaints raised by critics of the July 1 election is the allegation that one of the political parties bought pre-paid gift cards for stores that were given away to voters for their support of the party's candidates.
President Felipe Calderón has said that such allegations should be investigated.
Other anomalies reported include several regular voting stations where the PRI won by exactly 100 votes. Overspending on election campaigns, allegedly by the PRI, was another alleged election irregularity.
Leaders of Vazquez Mota's PAN party said they have lingering questions about some of the federal congressional elections.
In addition to electing a president, voters elected a new congress and six state governors.
Mexican election officials said it will take several months to investigate all the allegations.
President Barack Obama and other heads of state around the world have already congratulated Peña Nieto, who expects to take the oath of office in December.
Lopez, the UTEP physics professor, said more research is needed before he and other experts can say for sure whether Lopez Obrador was the likely winner of the 2012 election.
"The more you dig, the more questions we have," Lopez said.
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.