Mexico City – Millions of Mexicans voted Sunday to decide the tightest race for president in their history, but as the last polling stations closed there was still no clear winner between a leftist firebrand who has promised to lift the poor and a conservative technocrat backed by business leaders.
Election officials declared late in the evening that they would not be able to announce the results until later in the week, possibly Wednesday.
The contest pitted Felipe Calderon, a conservative former energy minister, against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist former Mexico City mayor, supported mostly by the poor.
Surveys of voters leaving the polls by Mexico’s two major television networks showed the contest was too close to call. It also remained unclear how well a third candidate, Roberto Madrazo, the former governor of Tabasco, had done, though he was trailing the two front-runners before the election.
Lopez Obrador did not arrive at the downtown hotel where he was expected to receive the returns but closeted himself in his campaign headquarters instead. Calderon also remained out of sight at his party headquarters, awaiting news.
Just before the polls closed, Luis Ugalde, the head of the Federal Electoral Institute, appeared on national television and urged candidates and their supporters to wait for official results.
At stake in the contest is whether the country remains on a conservative track and stays a firm U.S. ally or joins a trend that has brought several leftists to power in Latin America in recent years, weakening Washington’s influence.
“This is about the struggle between social classes,” said Miguel Abel Sanchez, a 55-year- old shopkeeper, after he cast his vote for the leftist candidate in the rural town of San Rafael, 25 miles outside Mexico City. “We cannot live in a rich country with an enormous number of people in extreme poverty.”
The election was another milestone in the country’s march toward full democracy after more than seven decades of single-party, autocratic rule, which ended with the election six years ago of President Vicente Fox, who by law cannot run for another term.
The campaign was marked by wide differences on how to handle the economy and a storm of negative advertising, as Lopez Obrador’s opponents tried to generate a high level of anxiety that his leftist populism would undo the country’s democratic progress and stability.
Though Mexico has myriad problems, including rampant organized crime and environmental degradation, the election revolved around the issues of poverty and jobs, and how to close a yawning chasm between rich and poor that has sent some 10 million Mexicans north of the border in search of work since a free-trade pact with the U.S. took hold more than a decade ago.
Calderon, 43, said he would create jobs through more private investment and by cutting taxes. Lopez Obrador, 52, said he would spend $20 billion on social programs and public works to jump-start the economy.
Underlying the debate was the larger issue of whether Mexico’s attempt to fit into the global economy through free-trade agreements had done enough to alleviate poverty.
Lopez Obrador argued it had not and that a new economic policy to funnel more tax dollars to the poor was needed. Calderon wanted to stay the course.
Lopez Obrador also promised to slash spending on government salaries, root out corruption and cut other waste. He attacked what he called the privileged elite in Mexico, a network of businessmen and politicians that he said for too long had evaded taxes and become rich from government contracts and the sale of state monopolies.
“There cannot be a rich government and a poor people,” Lopez Obrador said repeatedly in his campaign speeches.
For his part, Calderon warned direly that Lopez Obrador’s plan would lead to more debt and an economic collapse. He said Mexico had to compete in the global economy and that it could triumph with his leadership. He said he would encourage more foreign investment, allow private partnerships in the state- run oil business and slash corporate taxes.
“I want a winning Mexico,” Calderon said.
Madrazo, 53, carrying the banner of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, tried to position himself in the center, promising to crack down on crime, cut taxes and provide more direct aid to the poor.
Throughout the country, from small towns to the sprawling capital, people stood patiently in line at open-air polling places, most of them little more than fold-up tables holding voter lists, ballots and cardboard ballot boxes with cellophane sides.
About two-thirds of Mexico’s 71 million voters were expected to turn out.