NUEVO LAREDO (Mexico), July 2: Thousands of expatriate Mexicans streamed south of the US border on Sunday to vote in their homeland in a tight race with high stakes for crime-weary border residents.

A large stream of US-based Mexicans trekked on foot and piled into cars to vote in a string of gritty border towns from Tijuana in the west to Nuevo Laredo below Texas.

Electoral authorities were taken by surprise at the number of expatriates who showed up.

“It’s a very close-fought race ... and if we don’t vote, we can’t hope to decide the outcome,” said Luis Tovar, 28, a shipping agent who drove from San Antonio, Texas, to vote in Nuevo Laredo, just over the Rio Grande.

Many waited for hours in the sweltering heat to cast their ballots in a fight between leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative rival Felipe Calderon.

The leftist had a lead of just two points in opinion polls after a campaign fought over job creation, the economy and graft.

Only 40,000 of an estimated six million to seven million Mexicans of voting age in the United States registered to vote by mail mostly because the paperwork was difficult.

In Nuevo Laredo, around 1,000 people lined up to cast their ballots at two voting stations specially set up to accommodate expatriates.—Reuters