Reporting from Mexico City — It was an old-style landslide for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which used to rule Mexico from top to bottom.
The party's hopes for once again ruling Mexico soared Monday after official tallies confirmed a sweeping nationwide victory in midterm elections a day earlier.
In addition to a win in Congress, the party, known as the PRI, held leads in five of six governorships, including two in states that had seemed securely under the control of the conservative party of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
"The PRI Crushes the President," blared the daily Milenio newspaper.
The PRI came up short on an outright majority in the lower house of Congress, known as the Chamber of Deputies. But it should be able to command the legislative agenda by joining hands with smaller parties.
The big loser was Calderon's National Action Party, which was hurt by the economic slowdown and a relatively low turnout that favored the PRI's seasoned get-out-the-vote machine.
The outcome will make it harder for Calderon to steer his legislative agenda, which includes proposed tax reforms and crime-fighting laws, during his three remaining years as president. The PAN has the most seats in the Senate, but not a majority.
During the campaign, the PAN sought to keep the spotlight off the country's economic troubles by emphasizing Calderon's 2 1/2 -year-old crackdown on drug traffickers.
But fretful voters sought reassurance in the PRI, which played up its long governing experience while repackaging itself as a modern party that had shed a corrupt and authoritarian past.
The PRI ruled for 70 years before losing to Calderon's party in 2000. It won a majority in the Chamber of Deputies three years later in results similar to Sunday's, but succumbed to infighting and finished a dismal third in the presidential vote in 2006.
The PRI beat the PAN by nearly 9 percentage points -- 36.6% to 28% -- in Sunday's congressional race, according to the government's preliminary tally. It led in gubernatorial races in two conservative states -- San Luis Potosi and Queretaro -- that everyone assumed were solidly in the PAN fold.
In the Pacific state of Colima, the PRI candidate for governor, Mario Anguiano, won despite allegations by opponents that he was linked to the drug trade. Anguiano, whose brother and cousin are jailed on drug charges, denied any ties.
