MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s projected presidential winner Claudia Sheinbaum will become the first female president in the country’s 200-year history.
“I will become the first female president of Mexico,” Ms. Sheinbaum said with a smile, speaking at a downtown hotel shortly after electoral authorities announced a statistical sample showed she held an irreversible lead. “I don’t make it alone. We’ve all made it, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our mothers, our daughters, and our granddaughters.”
“We have demonstrated that Mexico is a democratic country with peaceful elections,” she said.
The National Electoral Institute’s president said Ms. Sheinbaum had between 58.3 percent and 60.7 percent of the vote, according to a statistical sample. Opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez had between 26.6 percent and 28.6 percent of the vote and Jorge Álvarez Máynez had between 9.9 percent and 10.8 percent of the vote. Ms. Sheinbaum’s Morena party was also projected to hold majorities in both chambers of Congress.
The climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor said that her two competitors had called her and conceded her victory.
The official preliminary count put Ms. Sheinbaum 28 points ahead of Ms. Gálvez with nearly 50 percent of polling places reporting.
Ms. Sheinbaum will also be the first person from a Jewish background to lead the overwhelmingly Catholic country.
She will start her six-year term on Oct. 1. Mexico’s constitution does not allow reelection.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador anointed successor, the 61-year-old Ms. Sheinbaum led the campaign wire-to-wire despite a spirited challenge from Ms. Gálvez.
“Of course, I congratulate Claudia Sheinbaum with all my respect who ended up the winner by a wide margin,“ Mr. López Obrador said shortly after the electoral authorities’ announcement. ”She is going to be Mexico’s first (woman) president in 200 years.”
If the margin holds it would approach his landslide victory in 2018. Mr. López Obrador won the presidency after two unsuccessful tries with 53.2 percent of the votes, in a three-way race where National Action took 22.3 percent and the Institutional Revolutionary Party took 16.5 percent.
Still, Ms. Sheinbaum is unlikely to enjoy the kind of unquestioning devotion that Mr. López Obrador has enjoyed.
The main opposition candidate, Ms. Gálvez, a tech entrepreneur and former senator, had promised to take a more aggressive approach toward organized crime.
In her concession speech, she said “I want to stress that my recognition (of Ms. Sheinbaum’s victory) comes with a firm demand for results and solutions to the country’s serious problems.”
Nearly 100 million people were registered to vote and turnout appeared to be about 60 percent, similar to earlier elections.
Voters were also electing governors in nine of the country’s 32 states, and choosing candidates for both houses of Congress, thousands of mayorships, and other local posts, in the biggest elections the nation has seen and ones that have been marked by violence.
The elections were widely seen as a referendum on Mr. López Obrador. His Morena party currently holds 23 of the 32 governorships and a simple majority of seats in both houses of Congress.
Ms. Sheinbaum promised to continue all of Mr. López Obrador’s policies, including a universal pension for the elderly and a program that pays youths to apprentice.
The persistent cartel violence and Mexico’s middling economic performance were the main issues on voters’ minds.
