Mexico Elects Claudia Sheinbaum as First Female President, Promising Continuation of Lopez Obrador's Agenda

Claudia Sheinbaum will become Mexico’s first female president, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador whose popularity among the poor helped drive her triumph.

Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with between 58.3 per cent and 60.7 per cent of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico’s electoral authority. That is set to be the highest vote percentage in Mexico’s democratic history.

Sheinbaum is the first woman to win a general election in the United States, Mexico or Canada.

The ruling coalition was also on track for a possible two-thirds super majority in both houses of Congress, which would allow the coalition to pass constitutional reforms without opposition support, according to the range of results given by the electoral authority.

On her way to vote on Sunday morning, Sheinbaum told journalists it was a “historic day” and that she felt at ease and content. Her victory represents a major step for Mexico, a country known for its macho culture, with her six-year term beginning Oct. 1 once results are finalized.

Mexico’s largest-ever elections have also been the most violent in modern history, with the killing of 38 candidates. The deadly violence has stoked concerns about the threat of warring drug cartels to democracy. On Sunday, two people were killed at polling stations in Puebla state.

Sheinbaum, who has led convincingly in opinion polls over her main competitor Xochitl Galvez, will be tasked with confronting organized crime violence. More people have been killed during the mandate of outgoing president Lopez Obrador than during any other administration in Mexico’s modern history, although the homicide rate has come down over his term.

There were long lines of voters outside polling places, even before they opened at 8 a.m. local time, with some reports of delayed openings.

“It seems like a dream to me. I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman,” said 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, a Sheinbaum supporter in Mexico’s smallest state of Tlaxcala.

“Before we couldn’t even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I get to live it,” Montiel added.

Almost 100 million Mexicans were eligible to vote in Sunday’s election. Other key positions were also up for grabs, including eight governorships and both chambers of Congress.