By Alexander Manda

    MEXICO CITY, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's mid-term elections may well see a historically low turnout of some 30 percent, a leading pollster told Xinhua in an interview on Friday.

    "Eighteen-to 20-year-olds simply aren't registering to vote," said Dan Lund, who runs consultancy Mund Group in Mexico City, citing figures from the state election regulator the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE).

    "There has actually been a net decline in the number of 18- to 20-year-olds in the national registry," he said.

    Lund is predicting a turnout of some 30 percent, lower than the41.67 percent in the mid-term elections in 2003, and less than half of the number that turned out for 2000's general elections, which brought a new party the National Action Party (PAN) to power for the first time in 71 years.

    At least in terms of this category, Mexico appears going in the opposite direction to its northern neighbor the United States, where additional turnout by the nation's youngest voters helped Barack Obama win the presidency last year.

    "Youths are not registering across all social classes and all regions," Lund said.

    Mexico's main political parties, including the ruling PAN, the second largest party the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), have invested heavily in media campaigns targeting the youths, but produced little effect, he said.

    If the prediction of a low turnout proves to be correct, it may trigger a shakeup of the nation's parties after July 5, he added.

    Such a result "will probably trigger fighting within the PRD to reform the party, or to create a new social democratic party," Lund said, "But you will not see much of that before July 5."

    PAN won the general elections in 2006, while the PRD won a second place in the legislature for the first time, but looks set to lose ground during this July poll.

    The PRI, which led Mexico from the nation's 1917 return to the congressional rule until its 2000 defeat by PAN, looks set to take back the lead in the nation's legislature, according to pollsters.