Ruling party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected as Mexico’s first female president.

Sheinbaum won Mexico’s presidential election, according to the INE electoral institute’s rapid sample count released Sunday night.

The electoral institute’s so-called rapid count estimates the result of the election based on a sample that is representative of the vote across the country. It has a margin of error of +/-1.5 per cent, INE said.

The governing party candidate campaigned on continuing the political course set over the last six years by her political mentor President Andrss Manuel Lopez Obrador.

His anointed successor, 61-year-old Sheinbaum led the campaign wire-to-wire despite a spirited challenge from Galvez. This was the first time in Mexico that the two main opponents were women.

Shortly before electoral authorities’ announcement, Galvez wrote on X: “The votes are there. Don’t let them hide them.”

Sheinbaum is unlikely to enjoy the kind of unquestioning devotion that Lopez Obrador has enjoyed. Both belong to the governing Morena party.

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

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28-year-old Fernando Fernandez, a chef, joined the relatively small crowd, hoping for a Sheinbaum victory, but even he acknowledged there were problems.

“You vote for Claudia out of conviction, for AMLO,” Fernandez told AFP, referring to Lopez Obrador by his initials, as most Mexicans do.

But his highest hope is that Sheinbaum can “improve what AMLO couldn’t do, the price of gasoline, crime and drug trafficking, which he didn’t combat even though he had the power.”

Also in the crowd, Itxel Robledo, 28, a business administrator, expressed hope that Sheinbaum would do what Lopez Obrador didn’t.

“What Claudia has to do is put professionals in every area,” Robledo said.

The main opposition candidate, Galvez, a tech entrepreneur and former senator, tried to seize on Mexicans’ concerns about security and promised to take a more aggressive approach toward organized crime.

Nearly 100 million people were registered to vote, but turnout appeared to be slightly lower than in past elections.

Voters were also electing governors in nine of the country’s 32 states, and choosing candidates for both houses of Congress, thousands of mayorships and other local posts, in the biggest elections the nation has seen and ones that have been marked by violence.

The elections were widely seen as a referendum on Lopez Obrador, a populist who has expanded social programs but largely failed to reduce cartel violence in Mexico.

His Morena party currently holds 23 of the 32 governorships and a simple majority of seats in both houses of Congress. Mexico’s constitution prohibits the president’s reelection.

The Star