Claudia Sheinbaum won a landslide victory to become Mexico's first female president, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador whose popularity among the poor helped drive her triumph.
Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico's electoral authority. That is set to be the highest vote tally percentage in Mexico's democratic history.
Video: Sheinbaum becomes Mexico's first female president / Reuters
The ruling coalition was also on track for a possible two-thirds super majority in both houses of Congress which would allow the coalition to pass constitutional reforms without opposition support, according to the range of results given by the electoral authority.
Opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez took between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote, preliminary results showed, and Sheinbaum said Galvez had called her to concede. "For the first time in the 200 years of the republic I will become the first woman president of Mexico," Sheinbaum told supporters to loud cheers of "president, president." Victory for Sheinbaum is a major step for Mexico, a country known for its macho culture and home to the world's second biggest Roman Catholic population, which for years pushed 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 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, 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 get to live it," Montiel added.
Sheinbaum has a complicated path ahead. She must balance promises to increase popular welfare policies while inheriting a hefty budget deficit and low economic growth. After preliminary results were announced, she told supporters her government would be fiscally responsible and respect the autonomy of the central bank.
