{"id":42868,"date":"2024-06-03T07:06:33","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T07:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=42868"},"modified":"2024-06-03T07:06:35","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T07:06:35","slug":"mexico-elects-claudia-sheinbaum-as-its-first-woman-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2024\/06\/03\/mexico-elects-claudia-sheinbaum-as-its-first-woman-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico elects Claudia Sheinbaum as its first woman President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mexico\u2019s projected presidential winner Claudia Sheinbaum will become the first woman president in the country\u2019s 200-year history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor said Sunday night that her two competitors had called her and conceded her victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will become the first woman president of Mexico,\u201d Sheinbaum said with a smile, speaking at a downtown hotel shortly after electoral authorities announced a statistical sample showed she held an irreversible lead. \u201cI don\u2019t make it alone. We\u2019ve all made it, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe have demonstrated that Mexico is a democratic country with peaceful elections,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Electoral Institute\u2019s president said Sheinbaum had between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a statistical sample. Opposition candidate X\u00f3chitl G\u00e1lvez had between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote and Jorge \u00c1lvarez M\u00e1ynez had between 9.9% and 10.8% of the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The preliminary count, which started off very slowly, put Sheinbaum 27 points ahead of G\u00e1lvez with 42% of polling place tallies counted shortly after her victory speech. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The governing party candidate campaigned on continuing the political course set over the last six years by her political mentor President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His anointed successor, the 61-year-old Sheinbaum led the campaign wire-to-wire despite a spirited challenge from G\u00e1lvez. This was the first time in Mexico that the two main opponents were women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course, I congratulate Claudia Sheinbaum with all my respect who ended up the winner by a wide margin,\u201d L\u00f3pez Obrador said shortly after electoral authorities announcement. \u201cShe is going to be Mexico\u2019s first (woman) president in 200 years.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the margin holds it would approach his landslide victory in 2018. L\u00f3pez Obrador won the presidency after two unsuccessful tries with 53.2% of the votes, in a three-way race where National Action took 22.3% and the Institutional Revolutionary Party took 16.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier, G\u00e1lvez wrote on the social platform X, \u201cThe votes are there. Don\u2019t let them hide them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheinbaum is unlikely to enjoy the kind of unquestioning devotion that L\u00f3pez Obrador has enjoyed. Both belong to the governing Morena party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mexico City\u2019s main colonial-era main plaza, the Zocalo, Sheinbaum\u2019s lead did not initially draw the kind of cheering, jubilant crowds that greeted L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s victory in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fernando Fern\u00e1ndez, a chef, 28, joined the relatively small crowd, hoping for a Sheinbaum victory, but even he acknowledged there were problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou vote for Claudia out of conviction, for AMLO,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said, referring to L\u00f3pez Obrador by his initials, as most Mexicans do. But his highest hope is that Sheinbaum can \u201cimprove what AMLO couldn\u2019t do, the price of gasoline, crime and drug trafficking, which he didn\u2019t combat even though he had the power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also in the crowd, Itxel Robledo, 28, a business administrator, expressed hope that Sheinbaum would do what L\u00f3pez Obrador didn\u2019t. \u201cWhat Claudia has to do is put professionals in every area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere in the city, Yoselin Ram\u00edrez, 29, said she voted for Sheinbaum, but split her vote for other posts because she didn\u2019t want anyone holding a strong majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want everything to be occupied by the same party, so there can be a little more equality,\u201d she said without elaborating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main opposition candidate, G\u00e1lvez, a tech entrepreneur and former senator, tried to seize on Mexicans\u2019 concerns about security and promised to take a more aggressive approach toward organized crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 100 million people were registered to vote, but turnout appeared to be slightly lower than in past elections. Voters were also electing governors in nine of the country\u2019s 32 states, and choosing candidates for both houses of Congress, thousands of mayorships and other local posts, in the biggest elections the nation has seen and ones that have been marked by violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The elections were widely seen as a referendum on L\u00f3pez Obrador, a populist who has expanded social programs<\/strong>but largely failed to reduce cartel violence<\/strong> in Mexico. His Morena party currently holds 23 of the 32 governorships and a simple majority of seats in both houses of Congress. Mexico\u2019s constitution prohibits the president\u2019s reelection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheinbaum promised to continue all of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s policies, including a universal pension for the elderly and a program that pays youths to apprentice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G\u00e1lvez, whose father was Indigenous Otomi, rose from selling snacks on the street in her poor hometown to start her own tech firms. A candidate running with a coalition of major opposition parties, she left the Senate last year to focus her ire on L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s decision to avoid confronting the drug cartels through his \u201chugs not bullets\u201d policy. She pledged to more aggressively go after criminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The persistent cartel violence and Mexico\u2019s middling economic performance were the main issues on voters\u2019minds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julio Garc\u00eda, a Mexico City office worker, said he was voting for the opposition in Mexico City\u2019s central San Rafael neighborhood. \u201cThey\u2019ve robbed me twice at gunpoint. You have to change direction, change leadership,\u201d the 34-year-old said. \u201cContinuing the same way, we\u2019re going to become Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the fringes of Mexico City in the neighborhood of San Andres Totoltepec, electoral officials filed past 34-year-old homemaker Stephania Navarrete, who watched dozens of cameramen and electoral officials gathering where frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum was set to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navarrete said she planned to vote for Sheinbaum despite her own doubts about L\u00f3pez Obrador and his party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHaving a woman president, for me as a Mexican woman, it\u2019s going to be like before when for the simple fact that you say you are a woman you\u2019re limited to certain professions. Not anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said the social programs of Sheinbaum\u2019s mentor were crucial, but added that deterioration of cartel violence in the past few years was her primary concern in this election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is something that they have to focus more on,\u201d she said. \u201cFor me security is the major challenge. They said they were going to lower the levels of crime, but no, it was the opposite, they shot up. Obviously, I don\u2019t completely blame the president, but it is in a certain way his responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Iztapalapa, Mexico City\u2019s largest borough, Angelina Jim\u00e9nez, a 76-year-old homemaker, said she came to vote \u201cto end this inept government that says we\u2019re doing well and (still) there are so many dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said the violence plaguing Mexico really worried her so she planned to vote for G\u00e1lvez and her promise to take on the cartels. L\u00f3pez Obrador \u201csays we\u2019re better and it\u2019s not true. We\u2019re worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador claims to have reduced historically high homicide levels by 20% since he took office in December 2018. But that\u2019s largely a claim based on a questionable reading of statistics. The real homicide rate appears to have declined by only about 4% in six years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as the upcoming November rematch between U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump has underscored deep divisions in the U.S., Sunday\u2019s election revealed how severely polarized public opinion<\/strong> is in Mexico over the direction of the country, including its security strategy and how to grow the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the fight for control of Congress, the race for Mexico City mayor \u2014 a post now considered equivalent to a governorship \u2014 is also important. Sheinbaum is just the latest of many Mexico City mayors, including L\u00f3pez Obrador, who went on to run for president. Governorships in large, populous states such as Veracruz and Jalisco are also drawing interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mexico\u2019s projected presidential winner Claudia Sheinbaum will become the first woman president in the country\u2019s 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. \u201cI will become the first woman president of Mexico,\u201d Sheinbaum said with a smile, speaking at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":42871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[461,12],"tags":[7247,5178,10387,8700,11962,9331,11287,8982,6693,9560,9171,6083,10391,913,11273,5196,911,7319,7375,2264,2471,3642,3874,9974,7248,11743,5331,3797,1510,5445,10961,7968,6558,8386,10917,7574,3805,11377,12103,11625,6200,7400,8943,5655,8501,6082,11259,10041,6965,11325,8840,6988,10236,9313,6348,5510,10885,5273,5320,594,10353],"class_list":["post-42868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world-news","tag-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador","tag-biden","tag-campaign","tag-cartel","tag-chef","tag-city","tag-claudia-sheinbaum","tag-combat","tag-congress","tag-conviction","tag-crowd","tag-dead","tag-declined","tag-democratic","tag-drug","tag-economy","tag-election","tag-fern","tag-gasoline","tag-government","tag-joe-biden","tag-landslide","tag-lead","tag-leadership","tag-lopez-obrador","tag-majority","tag-mayor","tag-mexican","tag-mexico","tag-mexico-city","tag-mothers","tag-nine","tag-pension","tag-platform","tag-poor","tag-presidency","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-price","tag-professionals","tag-race","tag-referendum","tag-scientist","tag-security","tag-senate","tag-senator","tag-shot","tag-speech","tag-split","tag-street","tag-strong","tag-successor","tag-tech","tag-trafficking","tag-us","tag-venezuela","tag-victory","tag-woman","tag-women","tag-who","tag-x"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42872,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42868\/revisions\/42872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}