In a historic landslide victory, Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as the first female president of Mexico.
According to the Quick Count, an exercise conducted by the National Electoral Institute (INE) using a statistical sample of votes cast at polling places, Sheinbaum has received between 58.3 per cent and 60.7 per cent of the vote.
This puts her ahead of businesswoman Xóchitl Gálvez by almost 30 per cent.
Sheinbaum will take over from her mentor President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on October 1.
Who is Claudia Sheinbaum?
Sheinbaum held one of the most powerful political positions in the nation —mayor of Mexico City— which is thought to have helped pave the path to presidency.
Born to a secular Jewish family in New Mexico, her grandparents emigrated to Mexico from Bulgaria in an attempt to flee the Nazis.
She comes from a family of scientists: her father, Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, was a chemical engineer, and her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, is an emeritus professor of biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Faculty of Sciences. Meanwhile, her brother Julio works as a physicist.
Sheinbaum followed a similar path by studying physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and earning a master’s degree and a PhD in energy engineering.
She then studied Mexican energy consumption patterns for years at a prestigious research centre in California, where she also gained expertise in climate change.
While Andrés Manuel López Obrador was the mayor of the nation's capital, she was appointed secretary of the environment for Mexico City as a result of her experience and her involvement in student activism.
Her election as Mexico City's first female mayor in 2018 was followed by her resignation in 2023 to pursue a presidential campaign.
Safety concerns
The election, which put Sheinbaum against Gálvez, marked a turning point for Mexican women.
Mexico still poses a serious threat to women due to its extremely high femicide rate, which sees almost ten women killed each day.
The campaign didn't come without its share of violent attacks.
In addition to choosing a new president, voters also chose representatives to the Congress of Mexico, governors for eight states, the head of government in Mexico City, and thousands of municipal authorities.
In the days leading up to the election, local candidates in particular were attacked.
While some polls place the number of deaths at 37, the government claims that more than 20 people were killed throughout Mexico.
Sheinbaum has mostly remained quiet on this topic. She hasn't abandoned the nearly two-decade strategy of using the military to combat organised crime, which has been linked to a high rate of homicides.
The primary obstacle for the incoming president in Mexico will be persuading the people that she can put an end to the country's culture of impunity, which saw 95 per cent of all crimes go unpunished in 2022, according to the research tank Mexico Evalua.
