By Lizbeth Diaz and Sarah Kinosian
MEXICO CITY -Mexican voters endured lengthy waits on Sunday to solid ballots in a historic election anticipated to make leftist Claudia Sheinbaum, the ruling occasion candidate, the nation’s first girl president.
Sheinbaum has led in opinion polls over her essential competitor Xochitl Galvez, who represents an opposition coalition comprised of the Institutional Revolutionary Celebration (PRI), the right-wing PAN and the leftist PRD occasion.
A victory by both girl would symbolize a significant step for Mexico, a rustic recognized for its macho tradition. The winner, set to start a six-year time period on Oct. 1, will face formidable challenges together with addressing organized crime violence.
On her technique to vote on Sunday morning, Sheinbaum instructed journalists it was a “historic day” and that she felt comfortable and content material.
“Everybody should get out to vote,” Sheinbaum, a physicist and former Mexico Metropolis mayor, stated on native TV.
Galvez, a businesswoman and senator, chatted with supporters as she arrived to solid her poll shortly after polls opened.
“God is with me,” Galvez stated, including that she was anticipating a troublesome day.
Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum’s mentor, greeted supporters and posed for images as he walked from the presidential palace to vote together with his spouse.
There have been lengthy traces of voters exterior polling locations, even earlier than they opened at 8 a.m. native time (1400 GMT), with some stories of delayed openings.
“It looks as if a dream to me. I by no means imagined that at some point I’d vote for a girl,” stated 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, a Sheinbaum supporter in Tlaxcala, Mexico’s smallest state.
“Earlier than we could not even vote, and when you possibly can, it was to vote for the individual your husband instructed you to vote for. Thank God that has modified and I get to stay it,” Montiel added.
The marketing campaign has been marred by violence, with 38 candidates murdered together with a neighborhood candidate who was fatally shot on Saturday night time. That’s the highest toll in Mexico’s trendy historical past, stoking issues about the specter of warring drug cartels to democracy.
Virtually 100 million Mexicans are eligible to vote in Sunday’s election. Different positions up for grabs embrace Mexico Metropolis’s mayor, eight governorships and each chambers of Congress. About 20,000 elected positions are on ballots, essentially the most in Mexico’s historical past.
The polls will shut at 6 p.m. native time (0000 GMT on Monday). The primary official preliminary outcomes are anticipated late on Sunday.
‘FLOODED WITH BLOOD’
“The nation is flooded with blood on account of a lot corruption,” stated Rosa Maria Baltazar, 69, a voter in Mexico Metropolis’s upper-middle class Del Valle neighborhood. “I want for a change of presidency for my nation, one thing for a greater life.”
Lopez Obrador has loomed over the marketing campaign, in search of to show the vote right into a referendum on his political agenda. Sheinbaum has rejected opposition claims that she can be a “puppet” of Lopez Obrador, although she has pledged to proceed lots of his insurance policies together with people who have helped Mexico’s poorest.
Polls point out that Morena is prone to fall wanting securing a two-thirds majority in Congress. That might make it tougher for Sheinbaum to push constitutional reforms previous opposition events, together with the PRI, which dominated Mexico for about seven many years till democratic elections in 2000.
Challenges forward for the subsequent president additionally embrace addressing electrical energy and water shortages and luring producers to relocate as a part of the nearshoring pattern, wherein corporations transfer provide chains nearer to their essential markets. The election winner additionally should wrestle with what to do with Pemex, the state oil large that has seen manufacturing decline for twenty years and is drowning in debt.
Each candidates have promised to broaden welfare applications, although Mexico has a big deficit this yr and sluggish GDP progress of simply 1.5% anticipated by the central financial institution subsequent yr.
The brand new president will face tense negotiations with america over the massive flows of U.S.-bound migrants crossing Mexico and safety cooperation over drug trafficking at a time when the U.S. fentanyl epidemic rages.
Mexican officers count on these negotiations to be tougher if the U.S. presidency is received by Donald Trump in November. Trump, the primary U.S. president to be convicted of against the law, has vowed to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese language automobiles made in Mexico and stated he would mobilize particular forces to battle the cartels.
Sam Castillo, a 25-year-old dancer who lives between Oaxaca state and Mexico Metropolis, stated he hoped Sheinbaum could possibly be stronger on overseas relations than Lopez Obrador had been.
As he waited to vote at a polling place within the Florida district within the south of Mexico Metropolis, he stated he felt higher with the leftist Morena in energy as a part of the LGBT neighborhood.
“What we’ve seen with gender laws, with marriage equality, for me it has to do with occasion,” Castillo stated.