After taking up the project left behind by her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose popularity among the impoverished contributed to her success, Claudia Sheinbaum won a landslide victory to become Mexico’s first female president.
Based on a fast sample count conducted by Mexico’s electoral body, Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, received between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote to win the president. That is expected to be the largest vote percentage in the history of democracy in Mexico.
Based on the range of results provided by the election authority, the ruling coalition was also headed towards a potential two-thirds super majority in both chambers of Congress, which would enable the coalition to enact constitutional revisions without the backing of the opposition.
After receiving between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote in the first results, opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez announced her defeat.
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“To thunderous cries of “president, president,” Sheinbaum announced to her supporters, “I will become the first woman president of Mexico for the first time in the 200-year republic.”
Mexico, the nation with the second-largest Roman Catholic population in the world and noted for its macho culture, is celebrating Sheinbaum’s victory. For years, Mexico has promoted more traditional values and responsibilities for women.
In the US, Mexico, or Canada, Sheinbaum is the first female general election victor.
In Tlaxcala, the smallest state in Mexico, 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, a supporter of Sheinbaum, remarked, “I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman.”
“In the past, voting was prohibited to us, and when it was, you had to cast your ballot for the candidate your spouse advised you to support. I get to live it, thank God things has changed,” Montiel continued.
Sheinbaum faces a challenging future. She has to strike a compromise between taking over a big budget deficit and slow economic development, and her pledge to expand popular welfare programmes.
Following the release of the preliminary results, she assured supporters that her government will adhere to budgetary responsibility and respect the central bank’s independence.
She has promised to increase security, but she hasn’t provided many details. Additionally, the most violent election in Mexico’s recent history—38 candidates were killed—has exacerbated the country’s serious security issues. Numerous commentators claim that during Lopez Obrador’s administration, organised crime gangs gained more power and clout.
The deaths of two persons at polling places in the state of Puebla also clouded Sunday’s election results. Although the homicide rate has been gradually declining, more people—over 185,000—have died under Lopez Obrador’s presidency than under any other in Mexico’s recent history.
According to independent political risk analyst for Latin America Nathaniel Parish Flannery, “Sheinbaum will likely struggle to achieve a significant improvement in overall levels of security unless she commits to making a game-changing level of investment in improving policing and reducing impunity.”
Preliminary results indicate that the ruling MORENA party also prevailed in the election for Mexico City mayor, one of the most significant positions in the nation.
