Do Walmartians Ruled? The political power of an emerging middle class in Mexico.

This paper questions if an increase in consumption of durable goods -such as electric appliances, associated in the media with an emerging middle class- could have aided the incumbent party to retain the Mexican presidency in 2006 -again, associated in the media with the backing of the economic model by voters. Important data limitations forced to employ indirect tests of these and to rely on correlations rather than causalities -with the associated identification problems. Nonetheless, it was not able to reject the hypothesis alluded. Though, in a tight election, a small effect could make the difference, and this analysis suggests that this very probably happened.