Claudia Scheinbaum elected president of Mexico, becoming the first woman to hold the position

Predicted winner of Mexico's presidential elections Claudia ScheinbaumShe will be the first female president in the country's 200-year history.

The climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor said she received calls from her two rivals on Sunday night and conceded victory.

“I will be Mexico's first woman president,” a smiling Sheinbaum said at a downtown hotel shortly after election officials announced she had a commanding lead in a statistical sample. “I didn't do it alone. We did it together, with the heroines who gave us our country, our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters.”

“Mexico has demonstrated that it is a democratic country through peaceful elections,” she said.

The head of the National Electoral Commission said a statistical sample showed Sheinbaum received between 58.3 and 60.7 percent of the vote. Opposition candidate Xochitl Gálvez got between 26.6 and 28.6 percent, and Jorge Álvarez Maínez got between 9.9 and 10.8 percent.

In a preliminary count that started very slowly, with 42% of polling stations finished counting shortly after the victory speech, Scheinbaum had a 27-point lead over Galvez.

The ruling party candidates campaigned on a platform of continuing the political course established by their political leader, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, over the past six years.

His designated successor, Ms Sheinbaum, 61, led throughout the election despite a fierce challenge from Ms Galvez, marking the first time that Mexico's two main candidates were women.

“Of course, I salute Claudia Scheinbaum, who won by a landslide,” Lopez Obrador said shortly after the elections commission's announcement. “She will be the first (woman) to become president of Mexico in 200 years.”

If the margin holds, it will bring him closer to the landslide victory he won in 2018. After two failed attempts, Lopez Obrador was elected president with 53.2% of the vote in a three-way race in which his National Action Party won 22.3% and the Institutional Revolutionary Party won 16.5%.

Earlier, Galvez posted on social platform “X” that “the votes are there, don't hide them.”

President Joe Biden called Scheinbaum on Monday to congratulate him on his “historic election victory,” according to a transcript of the call released by the White House. The president also praised Mexico's successful electoral process, and the two leaders stressed their commitment to the strong U.S.-Mexico partnership.

Sheinbaum was described by AFP as “a committed leftist known for keeping a cool head in times of crisis,” and noted that she is the granddaughter of Bulgarian and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants.

But unlike Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum is “not a populist,” AFP quoted Pamela Starr, a professor at the University of Southern California, as saying.

“She's a mainstream left-wing politician” and likely “less ideological” than the outgoing president, Starr said.

Sheinbaum is seen as unlikely to command the kind of unquestioning loyalty that Lopez Obrador enjoyed. Both men are members of the ruling Morena party.

In the Zocalo, Mexico City's main colonial square, Mr. Sheinbaum's lead initially did not draw the kind of cheering, jubilant crowds that greeted Mr. Lopez Obrador's victory in 2018.

Chef Fernando Fernandez, 28, was among the relatively small crowd hoping Scheinbaum would win, but even he acknowledged there were problems.

“You vote for Claudia, you vote for AMLO, because of your beliefs,” said Fernández, who, like most Mexicans, calls López Obrador by his initials. But his biggest hope is that Sheinbaum “will fix what AMLO couldn't: gas prices, crime, drug trafficking, which he didn't fight despite being in power.”

Ichel Robledo, 28, a business administrator who was also in the crowd, said he hopes Sheinbaum can do what Lopez Obrador couldn't: “What Claudia needs to do is have experts in every field.”

Elsewhere in the city, Yoselyn Ramirez, 29, said she voted for Sheinbaum but split her vote for other offices because she didn't want anyone to have a supermajority.

“I don't want everything to be dominated by the same party, so I think there could be a bit more equality,” she said, without elaborating.

The main opposition candidate, Galvez, a technology entrepreneur and former senator, has sought to tap into Mexican concerns about their safety and has promised a more aggressive approach to organized crime.

Nearly 100 million people registered to vote, though turnout appeared to be slightly lower than in past elections. Voters elected governors in nine of the nation's 32 states, candidates for both houses of Congress, and thousands of mayors and other local offices in the nation's largest and most extensive elections ever. Characterized by violence.

The election was widely seen as a referendum on Lopez Obrador, a populist who has expanded social welfare programs but has done little to reduce Mexico's drug cartel violence. His Morena party currently holds 23 of the 32 state governorships and a majority in both houses of Congress. Mexico's constitution bars the president from running for reelection.

Sheinbaum has pledged to continue all of Lopez Obrador's policies, including universal pensions for the elderly and apprenticeship allowances for young people.

Galvez, whose father is an indigenous Otomi, rose from selling snacks on the streets of his impoverished hometown to start his own technology company. He ran for office as part of the main opposition coalition and left the Senate last year to rail against President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's “hugs, not guns” policy, which seeks to avoid a confrontation with drug cartels. He has vowed to go after criminals more aggressively.

The biggest issue

Continuing cartel violence and Mexico's mediocre economic performance were voters' main concerns.

Julio Garcia, a Mexico City office worker, said he voted for the opposition in the San Rafael district of central Mexico City. “They robbed me at gunpoint twice. We need to change direction, we need to change our leaders,” said Garcia, 34. “If we carry on doing the same thing, we will end up like Venezuela.”

In the San Andrés Totoltepec neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City, election officials passed Stefania Navarrete, a 34-year-old housewife, as she watched the dozens of cameramen and officials gather at the spot where Scheinbaum planned to vote.

Navarrete said he plans to vote for Scheinbaum despite his doubts about Lopez Obrador and his party.

“If we have a woman president, then for me, as a Mexican woman, it would mean going back to the situation before where being a woman meant I was limited to certain professions. That's not the case anymore.”

She said Scheinbaum's leadership's social programs are vital, but added that the worsening violence caused by drug cartels over the past few years is her biggest concern in this election.

“This is something the government needs to do more,” she said. “For me, security is the biggest challenge. The government says it will bring down the crime rate, but it's actually the opposite; crime has skyrocketed. Of course, I don't blame the president entirely, but in a way, he is also responsible.”

In Iztapalapa, Mexico City's largest district, Angelina Jimenez, a 76-year-old housewife, said she came to vote “to end this incompetent government that says we're doing good, but (still) causes so many deaths.”

She said she plans to vote for Galvez and her promise to fight drug cartels because she is genuinely concerned about the violence plaguing Mexico. Lopez Obrador “says we are better, but that's not true. We are worse.”

President Lopez Obrador has claimed to have reduced the country's all-time high murder rate by 20% since taking office in December 2018. But this is a claim based largely on shaky interpretations of statistics; the actual murder rate appears to have only fallen by around 4% in six years.

Similarities between U.S. and Mexican elections

Just as the upcoming November rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump has highlighted deep divisions in the United States, Sunday's election revealed how deeply polarized Mexican public opinion is over the country's direction, including security strategy and how to grow the economy.

Besides the fight for control of Congress, Mexico's mayoral elections are also important. The mayoral office is now considered equivalent to a state governorship. Sheinbaum is just the latest in a long line of Mexican mayors, including Lopez Obrador, who later ran for president. Gubernatorial races in the country's largest and most populous states, such as Veracruz and Jalisco, are also attracting attention.