The Financial Times compared Vicente Fox's victory in Mexico's presidential election and the defeat of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after 71 years in power to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It said:

PRI, born in the era of silent movies, was ousted in the era of the internet. As the privileged received more education, so they turned away from the party that had long twisted history books to play up its triumphs.

In another historical analogy, Spain's El Mundo described PRI as a dinosaur surviving from a political era that had disappeared in other parts of the world, and it called on other parties—such as Fox's PAN or the leftist PRD—which are better adapted to modern parliamentary democracy, to take its place.

The Montreal Gazette was quick to take credit for "the end of a political era and the beginning of a new chapter in [Mexico's] remarkable transformation into a fully functioning, modern democracy." It claimed:

For Canada and the United States, Mexico's partners in NAFTA, the results were an encouraging vindication of the view that liberalized trade and investment in Mexico eventually would lead to political reform.

Most other papers paid tribute to President Ernesto Zedillo, whose bold $1.5 billion program of electoral reform may well have helped bring down his party. A story in Canada's National Post outlined the extensive anti-fraud precautions: 350,000 "scrutineers," chosen at random from Mexicans with April birthdays, matched election cards that included a fingerprint, signature, hologram, photograph, and encrypted voting information with a voters' list, which showed a photo of each voter. The author continued:

Undoubtedly, there has been vote buying and intimidation. But the real problem with democracy here is no longer procedures but poverty. Excessive birth rates have resulted in a growing underclass. Who wouldn't sell their vote to feed their children?

An editorial in the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong was particularly optimistic about the voters' behavior:

[T]heir choice offers a useful lesson for other developing countries with social problems. Mexicans did not choose a rabble-rousing populist who promised the moon; instead, they elected a wealthy rancher and former Coca-Cola executive who promised a more honest government, starting with reforms of a corrupt judicial system and police force. … This suggests that people will make careful judgments when given real options, and should be trusted more than feared.

The arrival of political diversity was universally lauded. An editorial comment in the FT said, "It does not mean the end of the road for one-party states so long as communist rule survives in mainland China. But it marks a big step along the way." Britain's Independent managed to include a dig at Mexico's neighbor to the north in its ovation for the election results: