Claudia Sheinbaum will become Mexico’s first female president on Sunday, winning the election by a wide margin, the official quick count showed, cementing the dominance of the leftist Morena movement that has reshaped the country’s political establishment over the past six years, Mexican media reported.
The former Mexico City mayor won 58 percent of the vote, according to counts released by the National Electoral Institute. Her victory guarantees Morena another six years in power, founded 13 years ago by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a charismatic leader who emphasises helping the poor.
Her main rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, a pro-business, pro-indigenous tech entrepreneur, came in second with about 27 percent.
Sheinbaum, 61, a mechanical engineering professor and protégé of López Obrador, promised in her campaign to continue his governing programme.
Mexicans hail the winner
Thousands of people marched on the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square, as polls pointed to a Sheinbaum victory, chanting “Presidenta! Presidenta!” – the feminine version of a noun that has always been masculine. Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political scientist sympathetic to the Morena party, wrote on X:
After 200 years of our Republic, today we have a female president. And she’s a scientist. She’s a grandmother. She’s from the left. And she’s called Claudia.
Gálvez accused López Obrador of weakening institutions such as the federal electoral agency and eroding checks and balances.
On Sunday morning, José Carlos Ramírez, 60, a Mexico City lawyer, said he was voting for Gálvez:
We have to defend democracy. I don’t want an authoritarian government.
Sheinbaum promised to expand social programs created by López Obrador. She promised to preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement when it is renegotiated in 2026, but said the economic changes of recent decades have led to “starvation wages.”
Rogelio Librado Galicia, 45, a Mexico City engineer, voted for Sheinbaum. He said:
I’m not saying this government doesn’t rob. They all rob. But they’ve distributed money to the poor, unlike other parties that just steal for themselves.
Voters on Sunday also chose 500 federal lawmakers and 128 senators, the mayor of Mexico City, eight governors and more than 20,000 state and local officials.
What awaits the new president
The new president will face tense talks with the US over huge flows of migrants heading to the US through Mexico and security cooperation on drug trafficking at a time when a fentanyl epidemic is rampant in the US.
Mexican officials expect those talks to be more difficult if Donald Trump becomes US president in November. Trump, the first US president to be convicted of a crime, has promised to impose 100 percent duties on Chinese cars made in Mexico and said he would mobilise special forces to fight the cartels.
