Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected as the first female president of Mexico in a historic landslide win. The 61-year-old former Mayor of Mexico City won between 58 percent and 60 percent of the preliminary results of votes cast in Sunday’s election.
The result gives her a comfortable lead of almost 30 percentage points over her main rival, businesswoman Xóchitl Gálvez.
Ms Sheinbaum will replace her mentor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on October 1. The new president has promised continuity, saying that she will continue to build on the “advances” made by Mr López Obrador.
As Mexico’s first female president to break the political glass ceiling, Sheinbaum told voters in her victory speech, “I won’t fail you.”
Before running for president, Ms Sheinbaum was mayor of Mexico City, one of the country’s most influential political positions and one seen as paving the way for the presidency.
Sheinbaum, whose Jewish maternal grandparents immigrated to Mexico from Bulgaria fleeing the Nazis, had an illustrious career as a scientist before delving into politics. Her paternal grandparents hailed from Lithuania.
Both of her parents were scientists, and Ms Sheinbaum studied physics before receiving a doctorate in energy engineering.
She spent years at a renowned research lab in California studying Mexican energy consumption patterns and became an expert on climate change.
That experience and student activism eventually earned her the position of secretary of the environment for Mexico City when Andrés Manuel López Obrador was mayor of the capital.
In 2018, she became the first female mayor of Mexico City, a post she held until 2023, when she stepped down to run for president.
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