Critical election still too close to call

The country may follow a Latin American trend and move to the left.
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico's presidential election was too close to call Sunday with voters bitterly divided between a leftist offering himself as a savior to the poor and a conservative warning his rival's free-spending proposals threaten the economy.
Electoral officials were conducting a quick count of the votes and were hoping to declare a winner later Sunday. But they warned that they would hold off -- perhaps for days -- if neither candidate had a large enough advantage.
Mexico's two main television networks did not release the results of their exit polls, saying the difference was smaller than their margin of error.
Felipe Calderon, 43, of outgoing President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, has been running an exceedingly close race with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 52, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. The Institutional Revolutionary Party's Roberto Madrazo, 53, had been trailing in third place.
The vote was the first since Fox's stunning victory six years ago ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and it could determine whether Mexico becomes the latest Latin American country to move to the left.
Some complaints
Electoral officials said voting was relatively peaceful, although many voters complained polls opened late or ran out of ballots.
Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, said only eight of more than 130,488 polling stations failed to open -- the fewest in Mexico's history.
"We've had an exemplary election day, of which all Mexicans can be proud," Ugalde said.
Exit polls indicated National Action Party did well in three governors races -- Morelos, Guanajuato and Jalisco -- while Marcelo Ebrard of Lopez Obrador's party easily won the Mexico City mayor's post.
As for Congress -- key to determining whether the next president will be able to push through reforms -- none of the three main parties dominated: National Action had 35 percent of the lower house of Congress, compared to 31 percent for Democratic Revolution and 28 percent for the PRI, according to a TV Azteca exit poll that had a margin of error of 1.5 percent.
In all, more than 25,000 observers monitored the vote.
In Guerrero state, two poll workers were shot to death before the polls opened, according to Lopez Obrador's party. Electoral officials said they were investigating, but the killings appeared unrelated to the vote.
Many polling stations opened late, forcing voters to wait more than an hour to cast their ballots. In Nezahualcoyotl, a slum of 1.2 million people east of Mexico City, voting was delayed by flooding..
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