- Sheinbaum, a member of Mexico’s ruling party, will win by a “large margin”
- She comes from the left-wing party of current president AMLO.
- Sheinbaum defeated the opposition candidate Xóchitl Galves by double digits
Mexico City’s left-wing leader Claudia Sheinbaum appears poised to become North America’s first female president after being declared the winner by Mexico’s ruling party.
The pollster Parametria predicted that Sheinbaum would win with an overwhelming 56 percent of the votes, according to its exit polls, and the opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez with 30 percent. Four other exit polls also said Sheinbaum was poised to win.
The provisional results will be published in the next few hours. Gálvez has not given in and has told his followers to be patient until the official results.
A victory for Sheinbaum would represent an important step for Mexico, a country known for its sexist culture. The winner will begin a six-year term on October 1.
“I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman,” Edelmira Montiel, 87, a Sheinbaum supporter in Mexico’s smallest state, Tlaxcala, said earlier Sunday.
Mexico’s ruling party declared Claudia Sheinbaum the winner of the presidential election by a “wide margin” after polls closed on Sunday, putting her on track to become the country’s first female president.
‘Before we couldn’t even vote, and when we could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I can live it,’ Montiel added.
Sheinbaum’s ruling party, MORENA, also declared its candidate the winner of the Mexico City mayoral race, one of the most important in the country, although the opposition has disputed this and claims that its own candidate won the race.
Sunday’s vote was marred by the murder of two people at polling stations in the state of Puebla, adding to the multiple attacks that have made the largest elections in Mexico’s history also the most violent in its history. modern history.
Some 38 candidates were killed, and the violence stoked concerns about the threat warring drug cartels pose to democracy.
Security fears dominated the concerns of many voters at the polls and Sheinbaum will be tasked with taking on organized crime.
More people have been murdered during the term of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador than during any other administration in modern Mexican history, although the homicide rate has decreased during his term.
Pre-election polls indicated that MORENA and its allies will likely fail to gain a two-thirds majority in Congress.
That would make it more difficult for Sheinbaum to push constitutional reforms beyond opposition parties.
Pollster Parametria predicted that Sheinbaum would win an overwhelming 56 percent of the vote, according to its exit polls, while opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez (pictured) would get 30 percent. Four other exit polls also said Sheinbaum was poised to win.
The outgoing president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Among the new president’s challenges will be tense negotiations with the United States over the huge flows of immigrants crossing Mexico bound for the United States and security cooperation on drug trafficking at a time when the fentanyl epidemic in The United States wreaks havoc.
Mexican officials expect these negotiations to be more difficult if Donald Trump wins the US presidency in November.
Trump has promised to impose 100 percent tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico and said he would mobilize special forces to fight cartels.
At home, the next president will be tasked with addressing electricity and water shortages and luring manufacturers to relocate as part of the nearshoring trend, in which companies move supply chains closer to their main markets.
The election winner will also have to decide what to do with Pemex, the state oil giant that has seen its production decline for two decades and is drowning in debt.
Sheinbaum has promised to expand social assistance programs, although Mexico has a large deficit this year and slow GDP growth of just the 1.5% expected by the central bank next year.
López Obrador has loomed over the campaign, seeking to turn the vote into a referendum on his political agenda.
Sheinbaum has rejected opposition claims that she would be a “puppet” of López Obrador, although she has pledged to continue many of his policies, including those that have helped Mexico’s poorest.
Political analyst Viri Ríos said she thought it was pure sexism that people believed Sheinbaum was going to be a puppet.
“It’s amazing that people can’t believe that she’s going to make her own decisions, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that she’s a woman,” she said.