Polls have closed in Mexico for lower house elections, with preliminary results suggesting the ruling Moreno party and its allies of incumbent President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will win a slim majority in Congress.
The election was preceded by one of the country's bloodiest campaigns in recent history, and dozens of politicians were killed during the voting.
On Sunday, a severed head was thrown into a polling station and five election workers were killed, the BBC reports.
Early forecasts suggest that Lopez Obrador's party is on track to lose its two-thirds majority in the lower house of Congress, which has sought to continue a program of reforms it calls the "Fourth Transformation," but may still win an absolute majority with allies.
About 51 percent of the estimated 93,5 million eligible voters went to the polls.
The election is seen as a referendum on the leftist rule of 67-year-old Lopez Obrador, who is halfway through a six-year term.
Despite maintaining high approval ratings, Lopez Obrador has faced mounting criticism over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his failure to fight drug cartels.
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Mexico's main opposition parties have formed an electoral and legislative alliance and are seeking to topple the government's dominance of the legislature.
The violence continued on the day of the vote.
Five people who worked in the electoral process were killed in the state of Chiapas. In the state of Mexico, someone threw an unactivated grenade into a polling station.
In the border city of Tijuana, a man threw his severed head at a polling station, and plastic bags filled with body parts were found nearby, local authorities announced.
Elsewhere, videos showed activists attacking polling stations, and voting had to be suspended in some places.
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