Claudia Sheinbaum to Become Mexico’s First Female President

Exit polls project Claudia Sheinbaum will become Mexico's first woman president, winning around 56% of the vote to defeat rival Xóchitl Gálvez in a historic election.

It is a good day for Mexico, and the first numbers of the exit polls of the presidential election, which took place on Sunday, indicate that Claudia Sheinbaum can become the first female president of the country. The 61-year-old leading the Morena party and former mayor of Mexico City is alleged to have secured roughly 56% of the votes to edge past her rival Xóchitl Gálvez.

Sheinbaum, who has a background in science, benefits from the backing of the outgoing, nationalist, and populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who chose not to run for re-election for the presidency, which in Mexico is a non-renewable, six-year position. López Obrador’s Morena party has already announced victory for Sheinbaum, while Gálvez has encouraged people to be patiently waiting for the last results that should arrive on Monday.

Another supporter of López Obrador, Sheinbaum has vowed to uphold his policies of social welfare in the fight against poverty. The Morena party has accused the government of lying by stating that through measures like increasing the minimum wage, millions of people were taken out of the poverty line. However, critics claim López Obrador has eroded democracy in Mexico.

Gálvez is the 61-year-old senator and businesswoman who led the opposition coalition to remove Morena from the power position. She also called attention to the escalating acts of violence in the campaign period where more than 20 candidates were reported to have been assassinated according to the government. Gálvez vowed to combat crime with more vigor than the campaign that López Obrador famously coined, “abrazos no blazes”.

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Should the results hold, Sheinbaum will be sworn in at the end of September as the first female president in Mexico. Her triumph would ensure Morena, a left-wing populist party, stays in power following 12 years of centro-right administration.