Historic vote in Mexico: first female president expected

(Changes lead, changes headline, adds quote from Galvez in paragraph 8, adds new voter quote in paragraphs 17-18) By Stefanie Eschenbacher and Diego Oré

MEXICO CITY, June 2 – Mexicans will go to the polls on Sunday for a historic vote that will likely elect the country’s first female president, with the ruling party’s candidate Claudia Sheinbaum expected to sail to victory. The election is the largest in Mexico’s history, with about 20,000 items on the ballot.

Sheinbaum has been the leading candidate according to opinion polls and has had a significant advantage over main rival Xochitl Galvez, who represents an opposition coalition made up of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for about seven decades until democratic elections in 2000. the right-wing PAN and the left-wing PRD party. There were already long lines outside polling stations when the polls opened at 8am local time (2pm GMT).

Sheinbaum, speaking to reporters from a car window, said it was a historic day and that she felt comfortable and satisfied heading into the vote. “Everyone should vote,” Sheinbaum, a physicist and former mayor of Mexico City, said during a live broadcast on local television.

Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum’s mentor, greeted supporters and posed for photos as he walked out of the presidential palace to cast his vote with his wife Beatriz Gutierrez Müller. Galvez, a businesswoman and senator, chatted with supporters as she arrived to cast her vote shortly after the polls opened. “God is with me,” Galvez said, adding that she expected a difficult day.

Looming over the campaign, Lopez Obrador is trying to turn the vote into a referendum on his political project that Sheinbaum, a left-wing party, has pledged to continue. The elections were marred by violence: 38 candidates were murdered during the campaign, including a local candidate who was shot dead the night before the elections. The toll is the highest in the country’s modern history, raising concerns about the threat to Mexico’s democracy from warring drug cartels.

A victory for Sheinbaum or Galvez will be heralded as a major step in Mexico, making it the first female leader in a country often criticized for its macho culture. The winner will face enormous challenges, especially how to contain organized crime violence, electricity and water shortages and how to entice manufacturers to relocate as part of the nearshoring trend, where companies move their supply chains closer to their major markets.

The winner will also have to grapple with what to do with Pemex, the state oil giant that has seen production decline and drowning in debt for two decades. Both candidates have pledged to expand welfare programs, which could be a challenge amid a large deficit this year and sluggish GDP growth of just 1.5% that the central bank expects next year.

Sheinbaum has rejected opposition claims that she is a “puppet” of Lopez Obrador, although she has pledged to continue many of his policies, including those that have helped Mexico’s poorest. Lorena Bustillos, an indigenous woman living in the northern state of Chihuahua, said she did not trust any of the candidates to deliver on their sweeping election promises.

“They come visit and see all our needs and then take no action,” Bustillos said. Mexico has recognized 62 indigenous groups, and more than 11 million Mexicans identify as indigenous.

The new president, who will begin a six-year term on October 1, will also face a series of tense negotiations with the United States over the massive flows of US-bound migrants crossing Mexico and security cooperation over drug trafficking a time when America’s fentanyl epidemic is raging. Mexican officials expect these negotiations will become more difficult if Donald Trump wins the US presidency in November. Trump, the first US president convicted of a crime, has pledged to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico and said he would mobilize special forces to fight the cartels, a hot button issue in a country which lost vast territory to an American invasion in the 19th century.

Nearly 100 million Mexicans are eligible to vote in Sunday’s elections, with key positions up for grabs including the mayor of the capital, eight governorships, both houses of Congress and a slew of regional and local posts. Polls show Morena is unlikely to win a two-thirds majority in Congress, which would have allowed Sheinbaum’s party to pass constitutional reforms that had eluded her predecessor.

The polls close at 6:00 PM local time (00:00 GMT on Monday). The first official preliminary results are expected late on Sunday.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)