ECATEPEC, Mexico (AP) – Voters in Mexico’s most populous state cast ballots Sunday that could hand the ruling party a much-needed boost ahead of next year’s presidential elections or a potentially devastating blow by throwing off its uninterrupted 88-year local rule.
Voting centers closed in the evening amid dueling accusations of vote buying, complaints that some voters received intimidating telephone calls warning them not to cast ballots and reports of bloody pig heads being left outside opposition party offices.
Polls gave the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party of President Enrique Pena Nieto a slight edge in the closing days of the Mexico State campaign, but the result would largely depend on which party got its backers to vote and the possibility of party switching by voters whose priority was preventing a PRI victory.
Some, like shopkeeper Ruben Sanchez Mendoza, 47, were fed up with almost 90 years of uninterrupted rule in the state by the PRI. Sanchez Mendoza said he voted for Delfina Gomez, the candidate of the leftist Morena party.
“We are tired of so much corruption, corrupt politicians, corrupt police,” Sanchez Mendoza said. “The truth is, without a change, I don’t see a future for ourselves or our children.”