Claudia Sheinbaum makes history and is elected as the first president of Mexico

The official Claudia Sheinbaum She won the Mexican elections on Sunday with a wide advantage, obtaining between 58.3% and 60.7% of the votes, according to the official quick count, and becomes the country’s first female president, driven by the political platform of the outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The president of the Mexican National Electoral Institute, Guadalupe Taddey, announced the quick count at the edge of midnight that put Sheinbaum, the official candidate, ahead of her rival, the opposition Xochitl Galvez, with 26.6% and 28.6%. The third candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, was very close to 9.9% and 10.8% of the votes.

In his first message to Mexicans, after the quick count was announced and with the preliminary results still below 42% of the count, Sheinbaum thanked them for the support received and “the recognition of the people of Mexico to our nation project. ”.

He also showed his gratitude to the opposition candidate Gálvez, who, he said, had called him a few minutes before “recognizing the victory.” She also referred to Máynez.

Shortly before, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador published a few minutes later a first message on to Sheinbaum

“She is going to be the first president of Mexico in 200 years,” he stressed and said that Sheinbaum will not only be the first, but that she would also be “possibly the president with the most votes obtained in the entire history of our country.”

The opposition Gálvez also recognized the victory of her electoral opponent in a public intervention. “I recognized the result because I love Mexico and I know that if her government does well, the country will do well,” said the defeated candidate about Sheinbaum’s victory and her role as the first president of the history.

However, Gálvez conveyed to the new president a “firm demand for results and solutions to the country’s major problems” and the indispensable respect for the Constitution and democratic institutions.” He recalled that the electoral process was one of the most violent.

Sheinbaum, who had planned to celebrate the victory in the capital’s Zócalo square, offered in his message to build a “just and more prosperous Mexico” and admitted that dissent is part of democracy, which is why he will look after “everyone without distinction.”

Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old scientist who was mayor of the Mexican capital, arrived at the elections as the presidential card of the Morena party, with which López Obrador came to power six years ago, and the mission of continuing the program now falls on her. of government of the president.

During the campaign, he promised to develop the second floor of the so-called “Fourth Transformation”, as the outgoing president defined his proposals focused on social programs.

The elections, the first in which two women competed for the presidency, were considered a referendum of the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador against the opposition option led by Gálvez for the coalition formed by a conservative party (the PAN), a leftist one. (the PRD) and the one that governed Mexico for seven decades of the 20th century (the PRI).

Gálvez was the first to speak out after the polls closed and before the first results were known. She highlighted the high voter turnout and in a triumphant tone she proclaimed that “it is clear that we have already won,” but mentioning the candidacies of her coalition partners in other states.

The opponent sent a warning message about the results. “We are competing against authoritarianism and power and they are capable of anything.” She also thanked those who went to vote, for her or not. “We have had an extraordinarily high participation. “It has been moving to see the lines of citizens waiting to vote.”

Minutes later, the president of Morena, Mario Delgado, came out to speak, assuring that the vote pointed to a victory for the ruling party. “Claudia Sheinbaum will be the first president in our history and in North America,” he said in a victorious tone. “There is no doubt about the victory,” he reiterated, ensuring that the advantage was very wide and that it was two to one.

“With this election we have confirmed the possibility of millions of people continuing to escape poverty,” he added, after defending what he considers progress achieved in Mexico during the government of the outgoing president. “It is time for the Fourth Transformation.”

After that declaration, the main square of Mexico City, the capital’s Zócalo, began to receive people in a spirit of celebration waiting for Sheinbaum’s victory to be confirmed.

Sheinbaum represented the continuity of López Obrador’s model, which expanded social programs but also militarized the country and could not control insecurity, impunity, or the advance of organized crime.

Gálvez, for his part, embodied a change and promised a more frontal fight against organized crime.

Concern about violence in the country was, in fact, present during voting day.

“For me the biggest challenge is security,” explained Stephania Navarrete, 34, in the San Andrés Totoltepec neighborhood, on the outskirts of the capital. Navarrete, a housewife, said she would vote for the ruling party and stressed the importance of social programs but she emphasized that crime levels “skyrocketed.” “Obviously I don’t completely blame the president, but it is in a way his responsibility,” she added.

Elsewhere in the capital, Julio García, an office worker, said he was going to vote for the opposition because “we have to change course” and recalled that “they have robbed me twice at gunpoint.”

In the largest elections in the country, in addition to the presidency, the two chambers of Congress, nine of the 32 governorships and more than 19,000 local positions had to be renewed.

One of the most symbolic is the mayor’s office of Mexico City, where the left has governed since 1997 and the ruling party suffered a setback in the 2021 midterm elections.

Yoselin Ramírez, a 29-year-old business owner who voted in a middle-class neighborhood that always favors the opposition, said she divided her vote because she does not want absolute majorities. “I don’t want everything to be dealt with by the same party so that there is a little more equality,” she explained after stating that for president she preferred the ruling party.

More than 27,000 federal troops, most of them from the National Guard, were in charge of security and the first half of the day passed peacefully, if slowly, in most of Mexico’s approximately 170,000 polling stations.

In Chiapas, the southern border state that has serious problems with violence, up to 42% of voting points suffered delays. In one of its towns, armed individuals kidnapped a man at a voting point who was later found wounded elsewhere, according to the state prosecutor’s office.

Morena, a party created by López Obrador ten years ago, governs in 23 of the country’s 32 states and has a simple majority in both chambers of Congress, aspired in these elections to expand up to the two-thirds necessary to be able to reform the Constitution without the need for consensus. , something that deeply worried the opposition and experts.