Gloria Perez
Associated Press
Mar. 10, 2003 12:00 AM
TOLUCA, Mexico - Mexico's former ruling party appeared to be bouncing back from its first national election defeat in seven decades with a strong showing in the country's largest state ahead of historic midyear congressional elections.
A major independent exit poll and early returns late Sunday indicated that the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, had outpaced President Vicente Fox's National Action Party in municipal and legislative elections in the state of Mexico, which borders Mexico's capital to the west, north and east.
Early official returns gave the PRI a narrow lead over Fox's party and indicated it may have recaptured the state's capital, Toluca, and its largest city, Ecatepec.
Sunday's election in what may be Mexico's most representative state was widely seen as a tune-up for the July 6 congressional election that will determine whether Fox faces a friendly or a hostile congress for the final three years of his term. Since taking office in December 2000, Fox has been hobbled by a congress dominated by opposition parties.
A setback here could mean that Fox support for a U.S. attack on Iraq, enormously unpopular according to all recent local polls, would be politically risky for one of the most friendly Mexican administrations the United States has seen in decades.
More than 8 million voters were choosing 124 mayors and 75 state lawmakers, 45 directly and 30 more according to vote percentages.
With 50 percent of the vote counted late Sunday, the PRI led National Action 33.2 to 31.4 in legislative races. In municipal races, the PRI led 34.6 to 30 percent with 44 percent of the vote counted. Several small parties accounted for the rest.
National Action also was in danger of losing Ecatepec, with 1.6 million people, and Toluca.
The independent polling company Consulta Mitofsky said its exit poll showed the PRI with an overall 39-29 percent advantage, while the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party trailed with 26.5 percent.
The poll claimed a 3 percent margin of error.
Sunday's elections were relatively peaceful, though in the farm town of San Salvador Atenco, a few miles east of Mexico City, where 300 farmers, anarchists and students ripped apart voting booths to demand that charges be dropped against activists arrested during earlier protests that blocked plans for a new Mexico City airport there.
In neighboring San Francisco Acuixcomic, protesters stormed the village and
destroyed all voting materials.
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