Mexico’s Presidential Election 2024: Sheinbaum’s Triumph Set to Become First Female President in Polarized Nation

Mexico’s Historic Presidential Winner, Claudia Sheinbaum

Mexico’s projected presidential winner, Claudia Sheinbaum, is set to become the first woman president in the country’s 200-year history. Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor, announced that her two competitors had called her and conceded her victory. Sheinbaum said that she will become the first woman president of Mexico, stating that she has demonstrated that Mexico is a democratic country with peaceful elections. The National Electoral Institute’s president said Sheinbaum had between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a statistical sample.

Opposition Candidates’ Percentage Votes

Opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez had between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez had between 9.9% and 10.8% of the vote. The preliminary count put Sheinbaum 27 points ahead of Gálvez, with 42% of polling place tallies counted shortly after her victory speech. The governing party candidate campaigned on continuing the political course set over the last six years by her political mentor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. If the margin holds, it would approach his landslide victory in 2018. López Obrador won the presidency after two unsuccessful tries with 53.2% of the votes in a three-way race where National Action took 22.3% and the Institutional Revolutionary Party took 16.5%.

ALSO READ: Sharan Sharma’s Mr & Mrs Mahi: Triumph of 200,000 Souls in the Heartfelt Saga

Sheinbaum is unlikely to enjoy the kind of unquestioning devotion that López 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 López Obrador’s victory in 2018. The main opposition candidate, Gálvez, 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. Mexico’s constitution prohibits the president’s reelection.

López Obrador, the Populist to Expand Social Programs

Voters were also electing governors in nine of the country’s 32 states and choosing candidates for both houses, 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 López 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. Gálvez, whose father was Indigenous Otomi, rose from selling snacks on the street in her poor hometown to start her own tech firm.

López Obrador’s Policies to be Continued in the next Era too

Sheinbaum promised to continue all of López Obrador’s policies, including a universal pension for the elderly and a program that pays youths to apprentice. A candidate running with a coalition of major opposition parties, she left the Senate last year to focus her ire on López Obrador’s decision to avoid confronting the drug cartels through his “hugs, not bullets” policy. Just as the upcoming November rematch between U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump has underscored deep divisions in the U.S., Sunday’s election revealed how severely polarized public opinion is in Mexico over the direction of the country, including its security strategy and how to grow the economy.