By the mid-1980s, the PRI should have experienced a double threat. First, economic crisis beginning in 1982 caused declining real wages, increasing poverty, and faltering growth. As a result, voters increasingly lost faith in the PRI's “performance legitimacy.” In a 1986 poll, 89% of respondents rated the national economy as bad or very bad and in a 1988 poll, fully 76% said that the opposition would handle the economy as well or better than the PRI. Second, the government's response to the economic crisis deepened the PRI's predicament by instituting market-oriented reforms that included downsizing the public bureaucracy and selling off state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Using the previous presidential election in 1982 as a benchmark, SOEs accounted for 20% less of the economy by the 1988 presidential election, 37% less by the 1991 midterms, and 60% less by the 1994 presidential race. Thus, not only did voters begin to lose faith in the PRI's ability to direct the economy, but privatization increasingly deprived the PRI of the resources it might have used to buy back their loyalty.

As a result of these pressures, voters began to turn away from the PRI. Its solid support among identified voters fell from 60% of the electorate in 1983 to just 32% in the late 1990s; however, voters did not turn entirely toward the opposition and instead the proportion of independents soared to over 35%.