Ruling Party in Mexico Heads for Election Victory : Politics: The president’s popularity and a vast public works program are credited with winning over voters.

MEXICO CITY —  Mexico’s ruling party appeared headed for victory in national midterm elections Sunday, buoyed by the popularity of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and a vast public works program.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, worked hard to regain control of Mexico City, which it lost to opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in the 1988 general election. The elections amount to a referendum on the first three years of the Salinas administration and, here in the capital, support for the president appeared to translate into votes for his party.

It was not clear early on who would win the two hotly contested governor’s races in the states of Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi, but opposition candidates in both states charged that there was a shortage of ballots and that some ballot boxes were stolen. The PRI is expected to easily win the other four governors’ seats at stake.

Besides the governorships, all 500 seats in the federal Chamber of Deputies and half the 64 Senate seats were up for election. The PRI, which has ruled Mexico for 62 years, sought a two-thirds majority in the Congress that would allow the party to make constitutional changes.

Unofficial results of the election are expected today.

After casting his ballot near the Los Pinos presidential residence, Salinas said, “What we are seeing today is a true photograph of the state of mind of Mexicans about their daily lives.”

The state of mind of Mexican voters, however, was not as clear as Salinas imagined.

Alejandro Gomez, a 23-year-old construction worker, was typical of those who said they would vote for the PRI. Interviewed in the eastern neighborhood of Santa Marta Acaticla--near the new subway line that Salinas inaugurated three days before the election--Gomez said: “There have been a lot of changes in this country with Salinas. He put in the Metro out here, paved the streets. He’s very hard-working.”

Asked if he believes Salinas is honest, however, Gomez looked confused: “He’s president. I don’t think any of them have been honest.”

Free and fair elections have been a central issue of this campaign. Last year, Congress approved new electoral laws requiring fresh voter lists, identification cards, transparent ballot boxes and a new Federal Electoral Institute. Despite this, few of the voters interviewed Sunday were convinced that the election would be honest.

“The PRI always wins even when it doesn’t win,” said Irene Morin, 27, an accountant voting in the Guerrero neighborhood. The responses to this perceived truism fell into two categories--from those who would vote for the PRI because the PRI always wins and from those who would vote against the party that would win anyway.

Concepcion Flores, 28, an opposition voter in the Tepalcates neighborhood, said: “There is a lot of conformism here and fear of change. I prefer to protest. People always say the PRI will give us this, the PRI will give us that.”

The new Metro line and a free two pounds of tortillas daily from the government prompted housewife Faviola Carreon, 23, to cast her ballot for the PRI in Tepalcates.

“This government is doing something for us. Others just took things away from us,” Carreon said.

Salinas has used billions of dollars from the sale of state enterprises in a nationwide public works program called Solidarity. The money has been used to pave roads, to install potable water, electricity and sewers and to build schools--often in areas where the PRI was politically weak. In the weeks before the elections, Salinas also delivered tens of thousands of land titles to poor families, many of them squatters.

The opposition points to this as an unfair use of state funds on behalf of the PRI. PRI officials respond that they are the party in power, legitimately benefiting from the work of the government.

All along the new eastbound Metro line, the government has placed billboards boasting of its accomplishments: “100,000 Land Titles,” one says. “10 Miles of Metro,” says another. And another says “Hospitals and Health Centers.”

Salinas’ popularity has risen dramatically since he was elected in 1988 with 51% of the vote--the lowest margin of victory ever for a PRI presidential candidate. That election was marred by charges of extensive fraud. Cardenas’ supporters assert that their candidate really won the presidency.

During the 1988 election, the opposition won nearly half the seats in Congress--239 to the PRI’s 261--for the first time since the PRI took power in 1929. Cardenas candidates also won four seats in the Senate, the first time opposition figures had ever been elected to that body.

A pre-election public opinion survey published by the independent magazine Este Pais gave Salinas a 62% approval rating. It showed that people are optimistic about the future--53% said they expect to be better off next year.

Government officials view the election as a plebiscite on Salinas’ neo-liberal economic policies, which have brought down inflation and opened Mexico to imports and foreign investment. The government is negotiating a free-trade agreement with the United States and Canada.

Several voters interviewed Sunday noted that prices had stabilized, but none mentioned free trade.

A few voters had heard the names of senatorial candidates for the PRI and the opposition, but no voters interviewed knew their present representatives in the Chamber of Deputies or who was running for the chamber on any party’s ticket.

Cardenas’ Democratic Revolutionary Party is believed to have a chance at winning Mexico City’s open Senate seat, but the party did not have poll watchers at all polling places, not even in districts that Cardenas swept three years ago.

Cardenas complained to election officials that his poll watchers had been turned away in many places.

Irene Morin, who voted for Cardenas in 1988, said she switched her support from Cardenas to the centrist National Action Party because she had not received enough information on Cardenas’ candidates.

PRI poll watchers, meanwhile, kept careful count of the people voting at each precinct. Their tallies were collected every hour or so by party workers responsible for getting out the PRI vote.

Among Mexico’s 31 states, there is one opposition governor, in Baja California. In Guanajuato, National Action Party gubernatorial candidate Vicente Fox is believed to have a good chance of beating the PRI’s Ramon Aguirre. In San Luis Potosi, National Action and Cardenas’ Democratic Revolutionary Party joined forces with a third smaller party in support of Dr. Salvador Nava, who was running strongly against the PRI’s Fausto Zapata.

Fox told reporters that 13 precincts in Guanajuato’s capital city received no ballots for the governor’s race and that half of the other precincts were short of ballots. Nava made similar charges in San Luis Potosi.

Cardenas said missing ballot boxes in San Luis Potosi were “a maneuver to violate the public vote and prevent the victory of Dr. Nava.”

In several precincts in the capital and in Guanajuato, poll workers reported that would-be voters with credentials did not appear on registration lists and were not allowed to cast ballots.

There were no reports of violence Sunday.

Times staff writer Juanita Darling contributed to this article.