At least 38 politicians were murdered in the run-up to the elections in Mexico. It is now clear who will hold the presidency. In any case, it will be a woman.
After the elections in Mexico on Sunday, which were overshadowed by violence, the left-wing government candidate Claudia Sheinbaum has been declared Mexico's first female president according to official projections. The former mayor of Mexico City, who was considered the favorite, received between 58.3 and 60.7 percent of the votes in the presidential election on Sunday, the electoral office of the Latin American country announced on Sunday evening (local time).
After the votes were counted in around 5,600 representative polling stations, opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez came in second place with 26.6 to 28.6 percent of the vote. The election office's announcement was postponed several times without explanation, leading to a situation of uncertainty. “They are lying as always,” Gálvez wrote on the news platform X before the data was published.
The leader of the ruling Morena party, Mario Delgado, told supporters in Mexico City that Sheinbaum had won by a “very large” margin. The official final result is still pending. In addition to the presidency, the Congress, the governments of several states and more than 20,000 public offices will also be filled.
Sheinbaum's opponent on the side of the right-wing opposition alliance is the indigenous entrepreneur Xóchitl Gálvez (61). Depending on the polling institute, Sheinbaum was 20 to 30 percentage points ahead of Galvez in the pre-election polls. For the first time in the history of the Spanish-speaking country, two women are leading the race for the presidency.
Both the election campaign and the voting were marked by violent incidents. Voting in the Mexican city of Coyomeapan in the state of Puebla was interrupted on Sunday after at least one person was killed in a polling station, according to the state election authority.
The Attorney General's Office confirmed another death at a polling station in Tlapanalapan, also in Puebla. Thirty-eight candidates were killed during the election campaign. The deadly violence has fueled fears of a threat to democracy from rival drug cartels.
