Calderon casts vote

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)

STORY: Mexico's President Felipe Calderon was joined by his family on Sunday as he cast his ballot in a hotly contested presidential elections.

Flanked by his wife and children, Calderon voted in the election that could set the stage for a comeback by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that ruled Mexico for half a century. Voters are seeking an end to a brutal drug war and weak economic growth that have worn down the ruling conservatives.

Twelve years after the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost power, opinion polls showed its candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, heading into the vote with a double-digit lead over his opponents.

The PRI was ousted in 2000 after 71 years of virtual single-party rule that was tainted by corruption, electoral fraud and authoritarianism.

Pena Nieto's closest challenger in pre-election polling was Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist former Mexico City mayor who narrowly lost the 2006 election to President Felipe Calderon of the PAN.