MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s ruling party declared Claudia Sheinbaum the winner of the presidential election by a “large margin” after polls closed on Sunday, putting her on course to be the country’s first woman president.
Pollster Parametria forecast Sheinbaum winning a landslide 56% of the vote, according to their exit polls, with opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez at 30%.
Four other exit polls also said Sheinbaum was set to win.
Provisional results will trickle in over coming hours. Galvez has not conceded and told her supporters to be patient for the official results.
A victory for Sheinbaum would represent a major step for Mexico, a country known for its macho culture. The winner is set to begin a six-year term on Oct. 1.
“I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman,” 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, a Sheinbaum supporter in Mexico’s smallest state Tlaxcala, said earlier on Sunday.
“Before we couldn’t even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I get to live it,” Montiel added.
Sheinbaum’s ruling MORENA party has also declared its candidate the winner of the Mexico City mayorship race, one of the country’s most important races, though the opposition has disputed that and claims its own nominee won the contest.
Sunday’s vote was marred by the killing of two people at polling stations in Puebla state, adding to multiple attacks that have made Mexico’s largest-ever elections also the most violent in its modern history.
Security fears dominated the concerns of many voters at the polls and Sheinbaum will be tasked with confronting organized crime.