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MARCO WERMAN: Mexican voters seem ready to go back to the future in next summer's off-year elections for Congress. Local elections and opinion polls seem to indicate there's a swing back toward the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI. The same one that ruled the country from 1929 to 2000. All the faces in Congress will be new next July because of constitutionally mandated term limits, and as Loren Matalon reports from Mexico City, the ruling Pan party looks set to lose big.

LOREN MATALON: One sign that this could be the PRI's year was the municipal elections in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yukatan peninsula at the beginning of the month. The PRI's political machine rolled up 63 percent of the vote, and a new poll commissioned by the centrist Daily, El Universal, lists the PRI as the most popular of Mexico's three major parties. The poll suggests Mexicans have forgiven the party for its legendary corruption and authoritarian – many say dictatorial – style owned over 71 years in power. Alejandro Stulman heads a risk analysis firm. He says President Calderon's Pan Party is stumbling at the state and local level, while the PRI has advanced popular social programs such as healthcare, even in states and cities controlled by the Pan.

ALEJANDRO STULMAN: Local governments have returned to the old practices of the PRI. And the PRI has rightly accused the Pan of being the same, as they used to criticize. And the PRI still maintain the ability to forge agreements with society. The Pan, on the other hand, is seen as a party rather very distant to social needs. And that's what the PRI has been able to capitalize on the most.

MATALON: As has a series of scandals.

ERARDO PRIEGO: These scandals are scandals involving corruption have been very bad for our reputation.

MATALON: Erardo Priego is a prominent Pan congressman and a former National Party president. He says a string of scandals, including allegations a Pan mayor took part in a politically motivated murder and that another was extorting payoffs from business leaders, have opened the window to a PRI comeback. Priego concedes that Pan has had mixed results against the country's vicious drug cartels, and says his party has not delivered on its election pledge to Mexicans to be the party that would create jobs.

PRIEGO: We also have to answer why we are not giving them the employment and why we haven't reduced poverty, and until when they're going to be watching heads without bodies in different parts of the country.

MATALON: The PRI has also achieved national success by brokering deals on reforms to the criminal justice system and the overhaul of Mexico's state-owned petroleum company, PEMEX. Without its consent, President Calderon's initiatives on both matters would have been blocked. Some Mexican commentators have labeled the PRI as the country's most progressive party. Monica Angullo is a political scientist at ETAM, the Etonomous Technical Institute of Mexico – the university that's trained the country's diplomats and politicians, including Felipe Calderon. Angullo refers to the party by its acronym, the PRI.

MONICA ANGULLO: Instead of voting for bad politicians that haven't proven themselves to be better than the PRI, there's a part of the electorate that now believes that even though the PRI might be corrupt and sleazy, at least it's a party that knows how to govern.

MATALON: Much of the party's apparent rise comes from its ability to capitalize on infighting within rival parties. The PRI is also capitalizing on perceptions that it has the experience to guide the country during a period of economic uncertainty and the ruthlessness to win the fight against the drug-driven violence that's claimed more than 7,000 lives over the past two years. For The World, I'm Loren Matalon, in Mexico City.

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