Claudia Sheinbaum wins in historic Mexico election mandate

The country’s first female president faces a raft of challenges, from crime to a fractured polity.

Mexico has elected Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of the capital, as the country’s first female president after a heated election on Sunday, with the nation’s top election authority projecting a comfortable win for the 61-year-old physicist-turned-politician.

Sheinbaum, a protege of Mexico’s outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is expected to win more than 58 percent of the national vote, the National Electoral Institute of Mexico (INE) said, in what is known as a “quick count” of the vote.

Her win entrenches the governing Morena party’s hold over power in Mexico, six years after Lopez Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, ran an insurgent campaign against the country’s traditionally mainstream parties to win the 2018 election.

“I commit to you that I will not let you down,” Sheinbaum said, in a victory statement on X. “There is history, there is homeland, there is people, and there is commitment.”

Late on Sunday night in Mexico, the principal opposition candidate, Xochitl Galvez, conceded defeat. A trained engineer with Indigenous roots, Galvez rose from poverty to become a tech entrepreneur.