Mexico City.– Ruling Mexican party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum will become the country’s female president after winning Sunday’s elections, according to the election commission, after convincingly beating her main rival.
Sheinbaum won between 58.3 percent and 60.7 percent of the votes compared to opposition leader Xochitl Galvez, who could only manage 26.6 percent to 28.6 percent of the vote.
Opposition Citizen Movement Jorge Alvarez Maynez obtained between 9.9 percent and 10.8 percent of the votes, the commission’s President Guadalupe Taddei said in a public message.
«I want to emphasize that these results are preliminary, just like those that are being disseminated through the Preliminary Electoral Results Program and are subject to confirmation of the district counts that will begin next Wednesday, Jun. 5,» the commission said. The initial count said the prediction is 95 percent accurate.
Sheinbaum, the former head of Government of Mexico City, will become the successor of the current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, on Oct. 1.
Before the results, the candidate of the ruling National Regeneration Movement was congratulated by the leaders of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia.
Tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Mexico City’s Zocalo, the largest public square in the country, to celebrate the triumph of Sheinbaum, who would first offer a message at a hotel in the historic center.
Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old scientist who was Secretary of the Environment of the Federal District when Lopez Obrador was head of the capital’s government, led the polls from beginning to end with the promise of continuing with the «transformation» of the country headed by the current president.
The commission said between 60 percent and 61.5 percent of people voted in Sunday’s elections, the largest in the country’s history, with more than 98 million people who were called to renew more than 20,000 positions, including the presidency, 500 lawmakers and 128 senators.
