- Sheinbaum gets about 60% of the vote, the opposition candidate gets 28%.
- He is an apprentice of the outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
- The newly elected president faces problems on the domestic and international front.
MEXICO CITY: Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, made history by becoming Mexico's first female president after winning a landslide victory in the country's presidential election.
Taking advantage of the popularity of his mentor and outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, among the poor sectors of society, Sheinbaum managed to obtain between 58.3% and 60.7% of the votes, as reflected in a quick count of samples carried out by the country's electoral authority: the highest percentage of votes in the country. democratic history.
Opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez admitted defeat after preliminary results showed she received between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote.
In addition, the ruling coalition was also on track to achieve a possible two-thirds supermajority in both houses of Congress, which would allow them to pass constitutional reforms without opposition support, depending on the range of results provided by the electoral authority.
“For the first time in the 200 years of the republic, I will become the first female president of Mexico,” Sheinbaum told her followers to loud cheers of “president, president.”
Her victory is an important step for Mexico, a country known for having the second-largest Roman Catholic population in the world, which for years promoted more traditional values and roles for women.
Sheinbaum is the first woman to win a general election in the United States, Mexico or Canada.
“I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman,” said Edelmira Montiel, 87, a Sheinbaum supporter in Mexico's smallest state, Tlaxcala.
“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 can live with it,” Montiel added.
However, the country's first female president has a difficult road ahead as she must balance promises to increase popular welfare policies and inherit a sizeable budget deficit and low economic growth.
After preliminary results were announced, he told supporters that his government would be fiscally responsible and respect the autonomy of the central bank.
He has promised to improve security but has given few details and the elections, the most violent in Mexico's modern history with 38 candidates murdered, have reinforced huge security problems. Many analysts say organized crime groups expanded and deepened their influence during Obrador's term.
Sunday's vote was also marred by the murder of two people at polling stations in the state of Puebla. More people have been murdered during Obrador's term (more than 185,000) than during any other administration in modern Mexican history, although the homicide rate has been gradually decreasing.
“Unless he commits to a groundbreaking level of investment to improve policing and reduce impunity, Sheinbaum will likely struggle to achieve meaningful improvement in overall security levels,” said Nathaniel Parish Flannery, an independent political risk analyst. from Latin America.
The ruling MORENA party also won the race for mayor of Mexico City, one of the most important positions in the country, according to preliminary results.
What awaits us
In addition to managing relations with the neighboring United States over border issues related to migrants and drug trafficking, the president will confront several domestic problems, such as electricity and water shortages, and attract manufacturers to relocate as part of the trend of nearshoring, in which companies move supply chains. closer to its main markets.
Sheinbaum will also have to deal with what to do with Pemex, the state oil giant that has seen its production decline for two decades and is drowning in debt.
“It cannot simply be that there is an endless pit into which public money is put and the company is never profitable,” said Alberto Ramos, chief economist for Latin America at Goldman Sachs. “They have to rethink Pemex's business model.”
Obrador doubled the minimum wage, reduced poverty, and oversaw a strengthening peso and low levels of unemployment, successes that made him incredibly popular.
Sheinbaum has promised to expand social assistance programs, but it won't be easy, with Mexico on track for a large deficit this year and slow GDP growth of just 1.5% expected by the central bank in 2025.
Obrador has loomed over the campaign, seeking to turn the vote into a referendum on his political agenda. Sheinbaum has rejected opposition claims that she would be a “puppet” of Obrador, although he has pledged to continue many of his policies, including those that have helped Mexico's poorest.
In his victory speech, Sheinbaum thanked Obrador as “a unique person who has transformed our country for the better.”
But political analyst Viri Ríos said she thought sexism was behind criticism that Sheinbaum was going to be a puppet of the outgoing leader.
“It's amazing that people can't believe that she's going to make her own decisions, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that she's a woman,” she said.
