Former mayor of the capital Claudia Sheinbaum won the presidential election in Mexico
Mexico is preparing to elect its first female president, as exit polls point to a victory for Claudia Sheinbaum. The former Mexico City mayor and Morena party candidate is projected to win up to 63% of the vote in 2024, ahead of closest rival Chitle Galvez.
The former climate scientist could become the first female president of Mexico, Latin America's second-largest economy, with a landslide victory, according to exit polls.
Claudia Sheinbaum, the 61-year-old former mayor of Mexico City and The Morena party candidate is projected to receive between 55% and 63% of the vote.
Mario Delgado, head of the Morena party, told supporters in Mexico City that Sheinbaum had won by a “very large” margin, hours before Mexico's election commission was to conduct a quick count of votes to determine the winner.
A major victory for Sheinbaum would be consistent with opinion polls during the election campaign, which gave her a significant lead, The Guardian notes.
In addition to the presidential election, candidates are vying for more than 20,000 positions in the largest election in Mexican history. The election was also the most violent in the modern history of the vast Latin American country, with more than 30 candidates killed and hundreds more thrown out of contention as criminal gangs vie for seats for friendly leaders.
Polls in two people were killed in the state of Puebla.
Claudia Sheinbaum took advantage of the support of her populist predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who founded the Morena party in 2014 and was the first to break the grip of traditional parties in the struggle for power and became president, having won a landslide victory in 2018.
She promised to continue his policies, including cash payments to the elderly and single mothers, as well as major infrastructure projects in historically poor regions, and to significantly expand the role of the military in areas usually reserved for civil society, such as internal security.
Sheinbaum's closest rival, Xochitl Galvez of the opposition coalition, also performed well, despite the fact that she was 20-30 percentage points behind Sheinbaum in exit polls.
With nearly 100 million people registered to vote on Sunday, long lines formed at polling stations in sweltering heat.
At a Mexico City polling station nestled between the wealthy Roma neighborhood and working-class doctors, voters were divided. about the merits of “Morena”.
Patricia Castro, a woman from Sinaloa state, shrugged at the mention of Sheinbaum and Galvez, but not Lopez Obrador. “He's the worst,” Castro said of Mexico's current president. “The worst.”
Castro voted for the conservative PAN party, which is part of the opposition coalition, saying: “PAN would do more if it were in power.”
Standing in line Caro Guzman, a middle-aged cleaner, emphasized the importance of Morena's social programs. “Thanks to Morena, my sister received money every month to take care of our mother,” Guzman said. “It really helped us when she was sick.”
Guzman added that she trusts Sheinbaum to continue Morena's social programs.
Sam Castillo, a 25-year-old dancer who lives between Oaxaca and Mexico City, said he hopes Sheinbaum can do better in international relations than Lopez Obrador.
“What we've seen with gender legislation, with marriage equality, to me has to do with the party,” Castillo said.
The new president faces tense negotiations with the United States over the huge flows of migrants heading to the United States through Mexico and security cooperation on drug trafficking at a time when the fentanyl epidemic is raging in the United States, The Guardian notes.
Mexican officials expect those negotiations to be more difficult if Donald Trump becomes US president in November. Trump, the first US president to be convicted of a crime, has vowed to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico and said he would mobilize special forces to fight the cartels.
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