[4][5] Francisco Labastida Ochoa, Humberto Roque Villanueva, Manuel Bartlett and Roberto Madrazo were the pre-candidates.

According to Muñoz Ledo it was inevitable that the same person would run for office a third time if there was no "true democratic process" in the PRD.

These included advocating for "respect for the right to life from the moment of conception," granting churches access to the media, granting free admission to public health centers, prisons, orphanages and nursing homes for priests and other ministers of worship, standardizing seminary coursework with public institution coursework, in addition to giving churches a unique tax system and allowing them to deduct taxes "when they contribute to human development.

Even though Fox had finally won the presidency, the promises he made to the churches in that letter were not kept given that the PAN failed to secure an absolute majority in the Congress of the Union.

The Reforma newspaper, which had predicted a Labastida victory in every poll they published during the campaign, attributed their mistake to the so-called "fear factor".

For example, one irregularity in the southern state of Campeche involved the European Union electoral observer Rocco Buttiglione and could have created problems for President Ernesto Zedillo had the PRI candidate won.

Overall, however, electoral observers identified little evidence that those incidents were centrally coordinated (as opposed to led by local PRI officials), and critics concluded that those irregularities which did occur did not materially alter the outcome of the presidential vote, which had been more definitive than expected.

The court system was also given greatly expanded authority to hear civil rights cases on electoral matters brought by individuals or groups.

[citation needed] On election night, exit polls and preliminary results from the Federal Electoral Institute quickly proclaimed PAN candidate Vicente Fox winner.