Mexico begins voting in election likely to choose country’s first female president

Mexicans are likely to choose the first female president in the country’s history on Sunday between a former academic who promises to promote the current leader’s populist policies and a former senator and technology entrepreneur who promises to step up the fight against deadly drug cartels.

Nearly 100 million people are registered to vote in the race to replace outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Voters will also elect governors in nine of the country’s 32 states and choose candidates for both houses of Congress, thousands of city halls and other local offices, in the biggest elections the country has ever seen and which were marked by violence.

The elections are widely seen as a referendum on López Obrador, a populist who expanded social programs but has failed to reduce cartel violence in Mexico. His Morena party currently holds 23 of the 32 governments and a simple majority of seats in both houses of Congress. Mexico’s constitution prohibits the re-election of the president.

Morena hopes to obtain the two-thirds majority in Congress needed to amend the constitution to eliminate oversight agencies that he considers to be cumbersome and wasteful. The opposition, which operates in a loose coalition, argues that this would endanger Mexico’s democratic institutions.

The two main presidential candidates are women and either of them would be Mexico’s first female president. A third candidate from a minor party, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, is far behind.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum is running with the Morena party. Sheinbaum, who is leading the race, has promised to continue all of López Obrador’s policies, including a universal pension for the elderly and a program that pays young people to be apprentices.

Opposition presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, whose father was indigenous Otomi, went from selling snacks on the streets of her poor hometown to starting her own technology companies. A candidate running with a coalition of major opposition parties, she left the Senate last year to focus her ire on López Obrador’s decision to avoid confronting drug cartels through his “hugs, not bullets” policy. She promised to pursue criminals more aggressively.

Persistent cartel violence, along with Mexico’s middling economic performance, are the main issues worrying voters.

The Mexican peso has strengthened against the US dollar in recent years, mainly due to high domestic interest rates and the huge increase in money sent home by migrants. But gross domestic product has averaged growth of just 1% per year under the current president.

López Obrador claims to have reduced historically high levels of homicides by 20% since taking office in December 2018. But this is largely a claim based on a questionable reading of the statistics; the actual homicide rate appears to have declined by only about 4% in six years.

About 675,000 Mexicans living abroad are registered to vote, but in the past only a small percentage did so. Voting is not mandatory in Mexico and overall participation was around 60% in the last elections. This compares to turnout in the recent US presidential elections. An exception occurred in 2020, when the confrontation between then-president Donald Trump and future president Joe Biden raised voter turnout in the US to 67%, its highest point in decades.

Just as the upcoming rematch between Biden and Trump in November highlighted deep divisions in the US, Sunday’s elections revealed how severely polarized public opinion is in Mexico over the country’s direction, including its security strategy and how to grow economy.

In addition to the fight for control of Congress, the race for Mexico City – whose top position is now considered equivalent to a government – ​​is also important. Sheinbaum is just the latest of many Mexico City mayors, including López Obrador, who has run for president. Governors in large, populous states like Veracruz and Jalisco are also attracting interest.

Polls opened at 8am and close at 6pm (0000 GMT Monday) in most of the country. The first preliminary and partial results are expected by 21:00 (03:00 GMT Monday), after the last votes in different time zones have closed.