LA PAZ, (Reuters) – Bolivian President Evo Morales  was heading for a landslide re-election yesterday as voters  backed his left-wing reforms asserting greater state control  over the economy and increasing social spending on the poor.

Exit polls and a quick count tabulation by Uno television  showed Morales took at least 61 percent of the vote and held a  lead of more than 35 percentage points over his closest  challenger, rightist former governor Manfred Reyes Villa.

Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, is hugely  popular among the Indian majority that also supported a  constitutional reform earlier this year to allow him to run for  a second consecutive term. Hundreds of Morales supporters, some waving rainbow colored  indigenous flags, crowded outside the presidential palace on  Sunday night shouting “Evo Again! Evo Again!”

Veronica Canizaya, a 49-year-old housewife said she voted  for Morales because of his aid programs in South America’s  poorest country.

“He’s changing things,” she said before casting her ballot  at a public school on the shores of Lake Titicaca. “He’s  helping the poor and building highways and schools.”

Morales is an ally of Venezuela’s socialist Presi-dent Hugo Chavez and ramped up social spending in his first term, tapping  increased government revenue after he nationalized Bolivia’s  energy industry in 2006 and raised taxes on natural gas  production. Bolivia, home to 10 million people, is South  America’s top exporter of the fuel.

But opponents say he has failed to increase output, stamp  out corruption in the state-run energy company and develop the  natural gas industry, signs of future challenges as Morales  tightens the state’s grip on the economy.

He pledges to launch state-run paper, cement, dairy and  drug companies and develop iron and lithium industries to help  Bolivia export value-added products instead of raw materials.

“Brothers and sisters, this is an electoral fight to change  Bolivia,” Morales, a former llama herder who never attended  high school, said on the campaign trail.

The third-place contender in the presidential race, cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina, conceded defeat last evening  as exit polls showed him taking 6 percent of votes. Morales’ anti-capitalist rhetoric blaming foreign investors  for ransacking the country’s mineral and energy riches has  slowed investment.

It also threatens to undermine what could potentially be  its next source of mineral wealth: lithium. Bolivia is believed  to be home to one of the world’s largest lithium deposits.

Lithium carbonate is the main component of the rechargeable  batteries that power laptop computers, cell phones and digital  cameras. Demand for the metal could soar if car makers begin  large-scale manufacturing of electric vehicles.