Claudia Sheinbaum is elected the first female president of Mexico

Claudia Sheinbaum was elected Mexico’s first female president with a historic resounding victory.

Mexico’s official election agency said preliminary results showed the 61-year-old former mayor of Mexico City won between 58% and 60% of the vote in Sunday’s election.

That gives her a lead of more than 30 percentage points over her main rival, businesswoman Xóchitl Gálvez.

Ms. Sheinbaum will replace her mentor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on October 1.

Ms. Sheinbaum, a former energy scientist, has promised to move on, saying she will build on the “progress” made by Mr. López Obrador.

In her victory speech, she told voters: “I will not let you down.”

Her supporters were celebrating in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, waving banners reading “Claudia Sheinbaum, president”.

Before running for president, Ms. Sheinbaum was mayor of Mexico City, one of the most influential political positions in the country and seen as paving the way for the presidency.

Ms. Sheinbaum, whose Jewish grandparents immigrated to Mexico from Bulgaria to escape the Nazis, had an illustrious scientific career before entering politics. His paternal grandparents are from Lithuania.

Her parents are both scientists, and Ms. Sheinbaum studied physics before earning a doctorate in energy engineering.

She spent years working at a prominent research lab in California studying Mexico’s energy consumption patterns and became an expert on climate change.

That experience and her student activism eventually landed her a position as Mexico City’s environmental secretary at a time when Andrés Manuel López Obrador was mayor of the capital.

In 2018, she became the first female mayor of Mexico City, a position she held until 2023, when she resigned to run for president.

Ms. Sheinbaum’s election with Ms. Gálvez, has been described as a sea change for women in Mexico.

Edelmira Montiel, 87, says she is grateful to live to see a woman elected to the highest office.

“Before we couldn’t even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God, that has changed and I have to live like that,” she said. told Reuters news agency, referring to the fact that women were only allowed to vote in national elections in 1953.

While the fact that the two frontrunners were both women was widely praised, the campaign was marred by violent attacks.

Along with a new president, voters also elected all members of Mexico’s Congress and governors in eight states, the head of Mexico City’s government and thousands of local officials.

And in particular, it was local candidates who became targets in the run-up to the vote.

The government said more than 20 people were killed across Mexico, although other surveys put the total at 37.

Xóchitl Gálvez, Ms. Sheinbaum’s opponent, has harshly criticized the government and her opponent in the presidential race for the violence that has devastated much of Mexico.

She promised to be “the bravest president, a president who confronts crime” if elected, but did not provide many details on how she would tackle the powerful criminal gangs behind most violence.

Mr. López Obrador, who has been in power since 2018, has been barred from running for a second term under Mexico’s constitution, which limits presidents to a single six-year term.

Having the support of the popular president, who has an approval rating of nearly 60%, has given Ms. Sheinbaum’s campaign a major boost.

Many of those who voted for Ms. Sheinbaum said they supported Morena’s poverty-reduction program and wanted it to continue.

The party is proud of how millions of Mexicans have lifted themselves out of poverty over the past six years.

Economists have pointed out that there are also other factors at play, such as an increase in remittances sent by Mexicans living abroad to their families back home, but voters appear to have favor what they see as a winning formula.