Mexico’s projected presidential winner Claudia Sheinbaum will become the first woman president in the country’s 200-year history.
The climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor said Sunday night that her two competitors had called her and conceded her victory.
“I will become the first woman president of Mexico,” Sheinbaum said with a smile, speaking at a downtown hotel shortly after electoral authorities announced a statistical sample showed she held an irreversible lead. “I don’t make it alone. We’ve all made it, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters.”
“We have demonstrated that Mexico is a democratic country with peaceful elections,” she said.
The National Electoral Institute’s president said Sheinbaum had between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a statistical sample. Opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez received between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote and Jorge Alvarez Maynez received between 9.9% and 10.8% of the vote.
The preliminary count, which started off very slowly, put Sheinbaum 27 points ahead of Gálvez with 42% of polling place tallies counted shortly after her victory speech.
Judaism wasn’t a central part of her life and her values are much more rooted in her extensive political work than her Jewish heritage
The governing party candidate campaigned on continuing the political course set over the last six years by her political mentor, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Sheinbaum, 61, is the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Bulgaria and Lithuania, a physicist who completed a degree in electrical engineering and worked for a UN body dealing with climate change. Sheinbaum, married for the second time and a mother of two, holds a doctorate in environmental engineering and served as the mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023.
Sheinbaum will be the first Jewish person to serve as the president of Mexico. The issue of Sheinbaum's Jewishness is complex. She doesn’t speak publicly about her ethnic background or Israel often and doesn’t present herself as a representative of any minority.
Although she has mentioned her family used to celebrate Jewish holidays during her childhood and adolescence, those close to her say that Judaism wasn’t a central part of her life and that Sheinbaum's values are much more rooted in her extensive political work than her Jewish heritage.
One of the significant challenges standing before her will be combating Mexico’s crime and violence rates. Commentators note that during President Lopez Obrador's term, criminal organizations increased their power, and the number in the country peaked.
Sunday’s elections, which also included congressional and local elections, were marked by bloodshed, with at least 38 candidates for various positions murdered. On election day itself, two people were killed at polling stations in the state of Puebla.