Claudia Sheinbaum will become the first woman to preside over Mexico after winning this Sunday with between 58.3% and 60.7% of the votes, according to official preliminary results. For the next six years she will govern the country of 127 million inhabitants following the guidelines of the Fourth Transformation, the political project of her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will leave office on October 1. “Today we have made possible the continuity and advancement of the Fourth Transformation and for the first time in 200 years, women to reach the presidency of the Republic,” Sheinbaum said after knowing the results.
Xóchitl Gálvez, candidate for the opposition coalition, obtained between 26.6% and 28.6% of the votes and Jorge Álvarez Máynez, from Movimiento Ciudadano, between 9.9% and 10.8% of the votes. All this with 31.07% of the scrutiny so far.
The Congress of the Union was also renewed this Sunday. Sheinbaum will govern with the support of a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies and is very close to also having it in the Senators. A resounding success for Morena, which thus increases distance with the opposition compared to the previous six-year term and allows them to reform the Constitution, a pending issue for López Obrador, which he baptized as “plan C.”
“It is the recognition of the people of Mexico to our history, to the results, to the conviction, to the will and to our national project,” she said calmly and moved in her first intervention in front of the press after the results were announced. where she noted that she had received a call from Gálvez congratulating her on her victory. “Our duty is and will always be to look after each of the Mexicans, without distinction. Although many Mexicans do not fully agree with our project, we will have to walk in peace and harmony to continue building a fair and more prosperous Mexico,” she added.
Afterwards, he moved from his operations center to the Zócalo in Mexico City, where his supporters gathered early in the afternoon and were able to listen to live mariachi music for hours. Marina Salgado was one of them. “I come to celebrate the democracy that today is better than in other years,” she said. He expects Sheinbaum “to commit to finishing the nation project that López Obrador started.”
For him, Sheinbaum had some words: “From here we say to you: president, thank you. We are going to maintain a government of the people, by the people and for the people. To guarantee the well-being programs to which we committed.”
In a video published on his social networks where he was seen in a very good mood, the president congratulated all the candidates and anticipated that Sheinbaum “will possibly be the president with the most votes obtained in the entire history of our country.” “I am happy, proud to be president of an exemplary, highly politicized people, with a democratic vocation,” he added.
In the Zócalo, Sheinbaum has been more energetic: “It is the triumph of the revolution of consciences and the recognition of our people of the mandate to continue the transformation of public life in Mexico. This June 2 we made history again,” she exclaimed before thousands of people from a stage under the main balcony of the National Palace. This will be his residence and place of work, in the same square where the Government of Mexico City is located that he occupied in recent years and where the projections show that his party partner Clara Brugada, with whom he hugged in the scenery. Sheinbaum has named some women from the history of Mexico: “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Leona Vicario, Matilde Montoya are present with us… and also all the anonymous Mexican women,” she listed.
Throughout the campaign, Sheinbaum led the polls at the head of the progressive coalition Let’s Keep Making History, which brought together her party, Morena (National Regeneration Movement, of which she is a founder), the Labor Party and the Green Ecologist Party. Since university she was active in the ranks of the left and today she defines herself as a “humanist.”
Late results
The day registered a participation of around 60%, similar to the last elections. Organizations of missing persons called to annul their vote by putting on the ballot the name of one of the 100,000 people who remain missing in the country.
The National Electoral Institute, in charge of organizing the elections and whose budget has been drastically reduced during López Obrador’s six-year term, postponed the announcement of the quick count three times, increasing uncertainty and tension despite the forcefulness of the results in the election. official page where they publish the count in real time. Finally, after midnight, the president of the National Electoral Institute, Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, came out to give the first official results.
More than 27,000 soldiers guarded the elections. In Chiapas, 73 voting booths could not be installed because they could not guarantee security. 2024 was the most violent process in the history of Mexico with at least 37 candidates murdered, according to the organization Datacívica. A local candidate from Michoacán was shot early Sunday morning and on Wednesday, during his campaign close, the candidate for mayor of a municipality in the state of Guerrero was murdered. Everything was recorded. In the video he can be seen greeting his supporters when a man takes the gun and shoots him in the head several times from behind.
The challenges of the first woman president
Sheinbaum has maintained on numerous occasions that he will continue the legacy of AMLO, with whom he has worked closely in the past. Faced with a very charismatic and personalistic leader, he will have to show his own leadership, more technical judging by his own academic and scientific career. “Sheinbaum has the opportunity to put his own stamp on his mandate, which has to do with the renewable energy agenda. Here his experience as a scientist generates broad expectations about what the country could advance on this issue,” says political analyst Palmira Tapia.
Find a country that continues to add victims to the violence of organized crime, impunity and corruption. He will also have to deal with the new president of the United States, who at the end of the year will decide between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. “There will be a relationship of mutual respect and friendship as before and we will defend the Mexicans who are on the other side of the border,” Sheinbaum promised in his speech.
“In addition, as the first female president, she has the challenge of advancing the gender agenda and demonstrating a way of doing politics that is different from the sexist culture that still permeates Mexican politics,” says Tapia.
