Peña Nieto holds onto power after Mexico's election

President Enrique Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, as abbreviated in Spanish) seems to have won the country's elections held in Mexico on Sunday, where 83 million citizens were called on to vote and choose who would sit in the 500-member lower chamber of parliament, nine state governorships and more than 1,600 other officials.

Despite calls to boycott the election, amid corruption scandals and the murder of candidates and campaign officials, the country's National Institute of Statistics confirmed that 48% of the citizens cast their votes, in the highest level of turnout since 1997.

Read more: UK oil majors eyeing enhanced partnerships in Mexico, says Pemex official

With 60% of the votes counted, projections pointed to the PRI taking around 30% of all the votes, giving it between 246 and 263 seats, followed by the opposition right-wing conservative party PAN, who got 22% of the votes, and leftist PRD, in third place.

Jaime Rodriguez Calderon, an independent candidate also known as “El Bronco, won the election in Nuevo León State, the second wealthiest state in the country, for the first time since legal changes allow that.

Voting was largely peaceful, although some activists set fire to ballot boxes in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero, where a former mayor was also shot dead.

The election was seen by some as a prelude to the country's general election that was due to be held in 2018.

It comes amid a government push for legislation aimed at encouraging investment in rural areas.

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