Mexico City’s central plaza, the Zocalo, erupted in applause and cheers early Monday morning as Mexico’s projected first woman President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke and pumped her fist before the crowd.

“We women have landed in the presidency,” she said amid a roar from supporters. “We are going to govern for everyone.”

Chants broke out when she referred to her political mentor Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She promised to “preserve his legacy” and continue many of his popular policies, including payments to elderly Mexicans and students.

However, instead of the packed plaza that greeted the current president six years ago, early Monday morning there were only a few thousand supporters – a sign that she still lacked the massive support her mentor enjoys.

Sara Ríos, 76, a retired literature professor at Mexico’s most esteemed university, celebrated the victory among throngs of other supporters, but said Sheinbaum has a long road ahead with many challenges, especially with the country’s ongoing cartel violence.

“She will make an effort to pacify the country and will make progress, but it is a slow process,” she said. “The only way for all of us to progress is by working together.”

With both of her competitors conceding, Claudia Sheinbaum’s name is likely to go down in history as the first woman president of Mexico. The one who broke through 200 years of male governments.

Mexico now joins a list of 11 Latin American nations that are or have been governed by women: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

The country, with 129.5 million inhabitants and the second largest economy in Latin America, is known for its “machismo” and violence against women. But Sunday Sheinbaum broke through that longstanding ceiling in an election where the ruling party won by a wide margin.

The projected winner, of the Morena party, will now have to govern a country where disappearances and murders of women are so high, they’re counted with numbers and no longer with names.

Gender equality in the workforce is often divided by class, with women like domestic workers facing harsh conditions. Despite opening access to abortion expanding significantly in recent years, feminist groups in Mexican states are still fighting for better access to sexual and reproductive rights.

In a speech Monday morning opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez recognized defeat in her campaign for Mexico’s presidency.

She said the results “aren’t in my favor” and said she called the race’s projected winner Claudia Sheinbaum to concede.

Gálvez, highly critical of Sheinbaum and her political mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said she would continue to “defend democracy” which she said the populist has put at asked.

Gálvez said she told Sheinbaum: “I see Mexico with a lot of pain and violence.”

• ONGOING VIOLENCE: López Obrador claims to have reduced historically high homicide levels by 20% since he took office in December 2018. But that’s largely a claim based on a questionable reading of statistics. The real homicide rate appears to have declined by only about 4 or 5% in six years by some measures.
• MORE COMPLEX CONFLICT: Under López Obrador cartels have expanded control in much of the country and raked in money — not just from drugs but from extorting legal industries and migrant smuggling. They’ve also fought with more sophisticated tools like bomb-dropping drones and improvised explosive devices.
• “AMLO’S” SHADOW: While Mexico’s next president will likely make history as being the country’s first woman leader, they will likely struggle to step out of the shadow of López Obrador’s larger-than-life image.
• THE ECONOMY: López Obrador brags about Mexico’s strong exchange rate against the U.S. dollar; but the strong peso hurts Mexican exporters, and high domestic interest rates – whcih underpin the currency – tend to choke off economic growth.
• PEMEX: Mexico’s state-owned oil company continues to totter under a mountain of debt, while López Obrador’s pet project _ a new oil refinery – has yet to function, and many of his other infrastructure projects are unfinished, over budget and unlikely to ever turn a profit.
• DEBT: López Obrador also leaves his successor with a staggering budget deficit equivalent to 5.9% of GDP, as well as ongoing costs to fund his building and benefit programs, which will limit their room for manuever.
• WATER AND ENERGY SHORTAGE: López Obrador’s favorite state-owned company, the Federal Electricity Commission, has proved both highly polluting and unreliable, especially in the face of drought and an extended heatwave. The whole country faces looming water and energy shortages.
• THE ENVIRONMENT: Mexico has suffered from long-running drought, wildfires and soaring temperatures causing monkeys to drop dead from trees. Construction of López Obrador’s Maya Train has also fueled environmental concerns.

“I will become the first woman president of Mexico,” Claudia Sheinbaum said in her victory speech.

She smiled, speaking at a downtown hotel shortly after electoral authorities announced a statistical sample showed she held an irreversible lead.

“We have demonstrated that Mexico is a democratic country with peaceful elections,” she said.

Projected winner of Mexico’s presidential elections Claudia Sheinbaum gave a victory speech early Monday morning, saying she received calls from her competitors, who conceded the race.

“I want to thanks millions of Mexican men and women who decided to vote for us in this historic journey,” she said in a speech.

She said she received a call from opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez congratulating her on the victory.

She said she hopes to work on the “construction of peace” in a violence-torn Mexico and built a “diverse and democratic” Mexico.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that his political mentee will be Mexico’s first woman president.

“Of course I congratulate Claudia Sheinbaum with all my respect who ended up the winner by a wide margin. She is going to be Mexico’s first (woman) president in 200 years,” López Obrador said.

According to projections by Mexico’s electoral agency President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party will hold a congressional majority.

This would allow Claudia Sheinbaum, who the agency has projected will win the race, to push through her agenda with ease.

Climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum held an irreversible lead Sunday in the presidential race that would make her Mexico’s first female president, according to an official quick count.

The National Electoral Institute’s president said Sheinbaum had between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a statistical sample. Opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez had between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote and Jorge Álvarez Máynez had between 9.9% and 10.8% of the vote.

The governing party candidate campaigned on continuing the political course set over the last six years by her political mentor President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

His anointed successor, the 61-year-old Sheinbaum led the campaign wire-to-wire despite a spirited challenge from Gálvez. This was the first time in Mexico that the two main opponents were women.

Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum is leading the presidential race with 30% of polling place tallies counted by Mexico’s electoral authority.

Sheinbaum, candidate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party, leads with more than 57% of the vote.

Lagging behind her is opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez with nearly 30% of the vote.

Longshot candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez trailed with little more than 10% of the vote.

Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum is leading the presidential race with 20% of polling place tallies counted by Mexico’s electoral authority.

Vote counts have been slow, opening the door for competitor Xóchitl Gálvez to sow doubt in election results.

“The votes are there. Don’t let them hide them,” Gálvez wrote on the social platform X shortly before the electoral authorities’ announcement.

Mexico’s electoral agency, the National Electoral Institute, announced that it will give an update on the vote count shortly.

Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum is leading the presidential race with 10% of polling place tallies counted by Mexico’s electoral authority. Vote counts have been slow.

The head of Mexico’s electoral agency called on political parties, candidates and the media “to act with restraint, prudence and responsibility” in announcing results after a number of candidates and news organizations called the presidential race based on private exit polls with little official results available.

“Our electoral system is designed to ensure that every vote counts and that every result is verified in a fair and transparent manner,” wrote Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, the president of the electoral institute in a statement.

Vote counts continue to lag in Mexico’s historic election. Despite private exit polls favoring frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum, The Associated Press bases its report on official results and will continue to update coverage as votes roll in.

As night fell, crowds in Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zocalo, still hadn’t formed.

The plaza where frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum plans to celebrate her victory resonated with music piped through speakers rather than the buzz of yet-to-arrive crowds. It was a stark contrast from just six years before when Mexicans flooded into the plaza in the early hours of the night to celebrate the eventual victory of her political mentor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Throughout the campaign, Sheinbaum failed to generate the same enthusiasm that López Obrador, better known as by his nickname “AMLO,” has long enjoyed.

After polls closed, supporters of Sheinbaum and López Obrador’s party began to arrive in Mexico City’s Zocalo. Some street vendors were promoting Sheinbaum dolls – though those of the populist president appeared to be selling faster.

Fernando Fernández, a 28-year-old chef, and Itxel Robledo, 28, an administrator, opted to buy two pairs of socks with the image of López Obrador while they waited for the results.

“You vote for Claudia out of conviction, for AMLO,” Fernández said. But his highest hope is that Sheinbaum can “improve what AMLO couldn’t do, the price of gasoline, crime and drug trafficking, which he didn’t combat even though he had the power.”

Robledo said that the best of López Obrador was the fight against corruption. “Yes, he achieved it although there is still more to be done and he helped a lot of poor people with his programs in Mexico,” he added.

Robledo, 28, said she supports López Obrador railing against corruption, but hopes that Sheinbaum will put more professionals in her government.

She hopes if Sheinbaum wins, she’ll be able to govern “without the shadow of López Obrador.”

Mexico’s electoral agency is beginning to publish results of the country’s historic elections, in which a woman is likely to be elected as president for the first time.

Mexico City is one of the nine states choosing its governor on Sunday.

The capital has been ruled by leftist governments since 1997, but in 2021 mid-term elections, the president’s party had a setback because important sectors of the capital’s progressive middle class did not agree with López Obrador. He had intensified his criticism of environmentalists, academics, human rights defenders and lashed out against independent institutions that serve as a check on his power.

Yoselin Ramírez, a 29-year-old who voted in a middle class borough, said she split her vote because she didn’t want anyone holding a strong majority. She chose Sheinbaum for president because she thought she was the most qualified.

“I don’t want everything to be occupied with the same party so that there is a little more equality,” she said without elaborating.

López Obrador’s Morena party is also hoping to pick up governorships in opposition strongholds of Guanajuato, Jalisco and Yucatan. Heading into the elections, Morena controlled the governorships in 23 of Mexico’s 32 states.

As votes are tallied in Mexico’s history elections, catch up on Associated Press coverage in the lead-up to the election:

In some parts of Mexico, voters chose to nullify their votes by writing in the names of some of Mexico’s more than 110,000 missing people as president.

The act was a clear sign of protest by those who were fed up by failures by the government to respond to people who have been forcibly disappeared amid cartel violence.

Among them was Victoria Delgadillo, in Xalapa in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz. She founded the “Xalapa Connections” collective and is looking for her daughter, Yureny Citlali Hernández, who disappeared in 2011 at the age of 26, and 12 other young women. Disappearances often haunt families.

“I voted for Yureny, for Pilar, for Carmen and all those many who have been disappeared,” Delgadillo said.

The “Vote for the Disappeared” campaign, launched nationwide by relatives of those who have gone missing, was not intended to discourage participation. Rather, it was created to make invalid votes have special meaning by registering the name of a disappeared person on a part of the ballots where the voter can write the name of an unregistered candidate.

Such families have criticized the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who they say has sought to minimize the problem of people going missing amid ongoing violence in Mexico.

“Vote for whoever you vote for, we mothers of the disappeared have to work with whoever is left,” Delgadillo said.

Fear gripped the small central Mexican town of Cuitzeo Sunday afternoon, where a town council candidate was shot dead just hours before voting began.

Candidate Israel Delgado Vega was chatting with men near his home when two men on a motorcycle shot him dead, according to local prosecutors. Less than a day later, all that remained at the scene of his death were flowers and candles. Few wanted to speak about his death.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to reduce violence while in office. He employed a strategy known as “hugs not bullets” focusing on not confronting cartels and instead addressing social ills fueling cartel recruitment, like poverty.

But under the leader, cartels have expanded control in much of the country and raked in money — not just from drugs but from extorting legal industries and migrant smuggling. They’ve also fought with more sophisticated tools like bomb-dropping drones and improvised explosive devices.

Elections have been marked by violence, especially in disputed areas like Guerrero, Chiapas, and Michoacan, where Delgado Vega was slain. It continues to be a top concern by voters.

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Thousands of Mexican voters lined up at their nearest consulate offices. The turnout exceeded Mexico’s expectations in several cities across the United States and other countries.

In Dallas, some voters started waiting in line at 3:30 a.m. local time, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Similar lines could be seen in Houston after hundreds filled sidewalks waiting in the heat with little to no shade for hours.

In Los Angeles, voters draped themselves in Mexican flags and erupted in cheers every time another ballot was cast, the Los Angeles Times reported. Street vendors selling food and snacks also gathered outside the consulate, catering to eager voters.

The Mexican consulates in San Francisco, San Diego and Fresno also saw long lines of hundreds of voters Sunday. California is home to more than three million Mexican immigrants.

“In some cases, such as in Madrid, California, Chicago and Phoenix, the large influx of people wishing to vote at the consular headquarters has exceeded expectations,” Mexico’s National Electoral Institute said in a statement.

Polls have closed in most of Mexico’s 32 states. Voters begin awaiting the results of an election that will chart the way forward in the coming years. Voting will continue for another hour on the Baja California peninsula.

While Mexicans were voting, a group of about 200 migrants crossed the Suchiate river that divides Mexico and Guatemala and walked up a highway outside Tapachula.

Venezuelan Eliezer Ávila crossed the Suchiate and quickly joined up with a group of other migrants moving north.

Ávila, a security guard back in Venezuela, said that along the banks of the Suchiate there were hundreds of other migrants who had been waiting for weeks to be attended to by immigration authorities. He said he couldn’t afford to wait around so he set out walking.

We ask “that (authorities) at least set up a humanitarian corridor to a city where we can wait or let us make it to our destination (the United States), he said.

More than 500,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap dividing Colombia and Panama last year, the majority Venezuelans.

The number of migrants reaching the U.S. border has fallen significantly since January and U.S. officials credit efforts by Mexico. The Biden administration is finalizing plans to clamp down on illegal crossings before the U.S. election.

Mexico has been moving migrants from the north back to the south away from the border. Migrants complain they are constantly extorted by authorities as they move through the country.

Associated Press journalists across the country have been working to cover the country’s biggest election in history, with more than 20,000 local and federal seats up for grabs.

• “AMLO”: The legacy of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who many see as a champion of Mexico’s marginalized and others see as a threat to democracy. A major question is:
• Violence: Cartels have expanded in power in much of the country in recent years, raking in money from new industries and using more powerful weapons to fight for territory.
• The Economy: Mexico’s peso is the strongest it’s been in years, but many Mexicans complain about inflation, especially in places like Mexico City.
• Gender: With two women leading the ballot, Mexico is on track to elect its first female leader. Both have promised to address violence against women and gender disparities.
• Democracy: López Obrador’s critics say moves he has made represent a democratic threat, something that has fueled massive protests.
• The Environment: Mexico has suffered from long-running drought, wildfires and soaring temperatures causing monkeys to drop dead from trees. Construction of López Obrador’s Maya Train has also fueled environmental concerns.
• Social Spending: AMLO’s social programs are so popular that even the opposition candidates promise to continue them, but spending on Mexico’s poorest has actually fallen

Armed men kidnapped one man who was voting in a polling station in the town of San Fernando, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, according to the Chiapas Prosecutor’s Office.

Two armed men burst into a local market where a voting station was set up and kidnapped the man. The man later appeared beaten up in another place, prosecutors said.

Violence has rapidly escalated in Chiapas in the past year like no other part of Mexico. Cartels and other criminal groups have waged a brutal war for control of the lucrative migrant and drug smuggling routes along the country’s southern border with Guatemala.

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Mexico’s populist leader López Obrador has long been a larger-than-life political force, and continues to be highly popular in Mexico. He has a strong base of support among poorer and rural Mexicans, who identify with his folksy charisma and have long felt forgotten by the country’s political system.

Because of that, his political ally Sheinbaum has used her connection with the leader in her campaign and promised to continue on many of his policies.

At the same time, his critics say his moves to attack the judiciary, slash funding to Mexico’s electoral agency and expand the military’s responsibilities in civilian life have eroded Mexican democracy. Sheinbaum’s competitor Gálvez has capitalized on criticisms of López Obrador throughout her campaign.

Many Mexican voters say violence is top among their electoral worries, but it’s also spurred democratic concerns.

Cartels and other criminal groups use elections – particularly local elections – as an opportunity to make power grabs. The National Electoral Institute says it has had to cancel plans for 170 polling places, mostly in Chiapas and Michoacan and mostly because of security problems.

While voting appeared peaceful, if time-consuming, at most of Mexico’s approximately 170,000 polling places, there were isolated incidents of violence Sunday after a bloody campaign process.

In the central state of Puebla, four armed assailants tried to burst in to a school where voting booths were installed to steal ballots. State police said arrests had been made.

And Queretaro’s governor, said that assailants had tried to burn ballots at four polling places. A video posted on social media showed two masked men escaping on a motorcycle after one attack.

Earlier this week, unidentified gunmen opened fire a couple of blocks away from a mayoral candidate’s final campaign rally in western Cotija, Michoacan.

Meanwhile, candidates have been picked off, with at least 28 political contenders slain this year, according to human rights organization Data Civica.

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The elections in Mexico are heating up – and not just politically.

In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, temperatures were already at 100 degrees (37 Celsius) before noon and were expected to rise further. Voters were covering their heads with stalks of leaves and palm fronds as they stood in line. So far this year, 14 people have died in the state from heat stroke, and howler monkeys have fallen dead from the trees.

In the Veracruz hamlet of Mandinga, two voters, Antonio Castillo, 43 and Esteban Ramirez, 45, took refuge in the little shade provided by an improvised cover of palm fronds.

Because of poor organization, some voters in Veracruz faced lines up to three hours to vote. Castillo and Ramirez, both taxi drivers, were uncomplaining. “The important thing here is to vote. We found these palm fronds here and they’re helping us,” Castillo said, “though we’d really like to have a real palapa.”

Even in the relatively temperate capital, Mexico City, about 7,350 feet (2,240 meters) above sea level, Hugo Nava, a 71-year-old university professor, said the heat was the worst he remembers in at least 30 years.

“I used to carry a sports coat or sweater around. No more,” says Nava, who showed up in shirt sleeves to wait in line to vote. “It’s bad.”

“The climate is having a big effect,” he said. “People are coming out early, because they don’t want to be here at noon.”

Jorge Álvarez Máynez is a longshot candidate in Mexico’s presidential race. He’s offered himself up as an alternative to those not content with the polarized candidates locked in a tug-of-war for Mexico’s top position.

While he’s sought to court the youth vote, he’s also become the subject of many internet memes throughout the race. A former federal lawmaker, he represents the smaller Citizen Movement party.

Mexico’s National Electoral Institute reports that as of 11 a.m. – three hours after polls were to open — only about 82% of voting places had successfully opened.

The reasons stemmed from violence-plagued areas where it was unsafe to have to people vote to local conflicts among residents and poll workers who didn’t show up.

It was especially difficult in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state, which has been torn by growing cartel violence over the past year.

Electoral authorities there said that they only managed to open 58% of polling places.

They said in many cases they were unable to open on time because there were not sufficient poll workers. In some cases they had to recruit voters from the lines.

Violence was behind some of the reticence. Local candidates have been killed in some Chiapas communities in recent days.

In Tamaulipas, at Mexico’s northern border with Texas, Magdalena Ruiz, 69, was frustrated by voting problems in the state capital Ciudad Victoria.

Ruiz had roused her grandson from bed early Sunday so that he could vote for the first time – he was not enthusiastic. But she convinced him it was his duty and got him to the polling place.

But it only got worse when they got there. Locals were fighting over the opening of the polling place and it was 11 a.m. before authorities were able to establish order and start the voting.

“I feel sad,” Ruiz said. “I hope my grandson doesn’t come away with a bad experience.”

Senator Xóchitl Gálvez is the opposition candidate in Mexico’s presidential elections.

She sold snacks in a small town in central Mexico as a girl to help her family and rose to national politics with a biography that could help take her to the heights of power. She speaks more candidly – similar to López Obrador – than her competitor and her story of humble origins helped her make a splash when she entered the race.

Gálvez is a fierce critic of the outgoing president, and doesn’t shy away from verbal sparring. She represents a coalition of parties that have had little historically to unite them other than their recent opposition to López Obrador.

But Gálvez hasn’t been able to ignite as much fervor as her supporters hoped,and she has trailed the ruling party’s candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum in polls.

Electing a female president would be a huge step in a country with soaring levels of gender-based violence and deep gender disparities.

Mexico still has a famously intense “machismo”, or culture of male chauvinism, that has created large economic and social disparities in society. In its most extreme form, the misogyny is expressed in high rates of femicides, and things like acid attacks against women.

Both frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum and opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez have promised to address high rates of gender-based violence and gender disparities if they win.

A historic number of women in the socially conservative country are taking up leadership and political roles.

That’s in part due to a decades-long push by authorities for greater representation in politics, including laws that require political parties to have half of their congressional candidates be women. Since 2018, Mexico’s Congress has had a 50-50 gender split, and the number of female governors has shot up.

Waiting to vote in her first election, 20-year-old Evelyn Elizondo Valdez of Xalapa, Veracruz, was pleased to have two women to choose from on the ballot.

“It has cost women a lot to get into public positions,” Elizondo said. “And even though they deny it, Claudia (Sheinbaum) is still an extension of (President Andrés Manuel López Obrador), a man. That’s why I think it (should be) Xóchitl (Gálvez).”

In Mexico City, Guillermina Romero, 59, hugged Sheinbaum when she came to vote.

Romero said her husband came from a sexist family and her mother was abused by her father. But she’s seen the change that Mexico has undergone over time. As she stood next to her daughter, also voting, she said it gives her hope.

Having a woman president “means that Mexico has changed, that they’re taking us into account,” she said.

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Claudia Sheinbaum has been the clear frontrunner of Mexico’s presidential elections in her bid to replace outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She is the chosen candidate for Morena, the party he created.

Despite running Mexico City, one of the biggest cities in the Western Hemisphere, Sheinbaum has struggled to construct her own image. While she has pitched herself as being a continuation of her political ally, she has a more reserved character and may turn out to be more progressive than López Obrador.

She has had to walk a fine line in her campaign – embracing López Obrador’s support, while not critiquing him on less popular fronts, like his security policy.

The campaign left many wondering whether she can escape the shadow of the larger-than-life incumbent.

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A relatively new trend is emerging in Mexican elections: bringing your dog to the voting booth.

At one polling place in central Mexico City, nearly a dozen dogs – ranging in size from Great Danes to pugs – were waiting patiently with their owners in lines that stretched around the block.

Koba, a tawny colored Husky, accompanied his owner, Marco Delaye, into the polling place, and the two emerged smiling. “He behaved very well,” said Delaye. “He let me vote without any problem.”

That was no small feat, given that turnout was very high early Sunday and polling places were jam-packed _ perhaps because Mexicans are lining up to vote early to avoid the country’s unprecedented heat wave.

Clara Brugada, a candidate for Mexico City mayor for the governing Morena party, took her pup to vote too.

Historic levels of migration have been at the core of upcoming elections in the United States, but it’s been largely left out of the electoral debate in Mexico.

The different ways migration is resonating in the two countries’ elections this year reflects the neighbors’ very different styles of democracy and attitudes on the issue.

Just about every Mexican family has an immediate experience with migration, so much of the conversation has centered about migrant protections. Mexico also still remains largely a sending and transit country, though more migrants are putting down roots here as the U.S. becomes more difficult to enter.

Donald Trump moved anti-immigration sentiment to center stage in U.S. politics seeing it as a winning issue for himself and Republicans.

No Mexican presidential candidate has tried to make immigration an issue beyond pledging to defend Mexicans already in the U.S.

At the same time, Mexico’s next president will likely have to work with whoever wins upcoming elections in the United States on cross-border issues.

At Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, security and immigration are top of mind for some voters.

“One of the main (concerns) is the out of control immigration that some authorities have not been able to resolve efficiently,” said teacher Daniel Martínez in Tapachula.

The 69-year-old said he still planned for governing party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum because he considers her to have a lot of experience as the former mayor of Mexico’s largest city.

Claudia Muñoz said the gender of the candidates shouldn’t be a deciding factor in casting your vote, but rather their ability to deal with Mexico’s security problems.

She called for a far greater security presence along Mexico’s porous southern border, as well as more security across the country and a bolstering of the economy.

Two of Mexico’s most powerful cartels have been battling for control of smuggling routes along the southern border, displacing residents and spreading fear.

Amid a sea of press and applauding supporters, presidential frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum strolled into her small voting site on Mexico City’s south side, waving and hugging men in cowboy hats as women snapped photos.

“Presidenta! Presidenta!” supporters chanted as neighbors stood on their roofs to take photos.

Opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez took selfies with supporters as she waited to vote in the central Mexico City Reforma Social neighborhood.

“Hang in there,” she said. “It is going to be a hard, difficult, contested day, it is not just a formality,” she said.

“There is a great turnout and I said it from the beginning: if people participate Mexico wins.”

Walking amid shouts of “You are not alone Xóchitl” and “We are going to win”, she said she was not nervous. “God is with me.”

Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizen Movement party waded through press with his team trying to avoid trampling other voters waiting their turn to vote.

As she left home to vote, frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters briefly that she was “very happy, very excited” on what she described as a “historic day.”

She said that she had a “quiet” night and that after voting she would come back home to have breakfast.

She called on people to go to the polls. “You have to vote, you have to go out and vote,” the former Mexico City mayor said as she left in a car.

Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador walked out of the National Palace and into a nearby voting location to cast his ballot.

The 70-year-old leader wearing a blue suit ducked into a voting booth to mark his ballot.

López Obrador oversaw a months-long internal campaign in his Morena party to select his successor. Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum emerged victorious in internal polling and received López Obrador’s seal of approval.

She ran a conservative campaign essentially promising to continue her mentor’s policies.

Voters of the Latin American country of 130 million people have started casting their ballots. Voters began lining up before dawn for the historic election.

The election – and Mexican politics in recent years – have been deeply divisive, reflecting polarized Mexican society.

Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum is a clear frontrunner in the race, and is seen as a continuation candidate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party.

Others have turned to opposition presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, who has focused her ire on López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” policy of not confronting the drug cartels.

Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the smaller Citizen Movement party has targeted the youth vote, but has trailed the two women.

At a special voting post on a large Mexico City medical campus where people like on-duty doctors and nurses who can’t get home to vote can cast their ballots, men and women are waiting for polls to open.

Aida Fabiola Valencia said, “yesterday I told my colleagues to go vote, I don’t know who they are going to vote for but it is the first time they are going to be able to elect a woman, who I think is going to play an important role, we (women) are 60% of the population, it is historic.”

There have been female candidates before in Mexico, but this is the first time the two leading candidates — Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez — are women.

Nearby, Mónica Martínez, said “The fact that people vote for a candidate who is a woman implies a lot of change at all social and work levels, that means that it is already starting to get better. It already is. But the fact that it is for a presidential candidacy is much more significant.”

On the fringes of Mexico City in the neighborhood of San Andres Totoltepec, electoral officials filed past 34-year-old homemaker Stephania Navarrete, who watched dozens of cameramen and electoral officials gathering where frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum was set to vote.

Navarrete said she planned to vote for Sheinbaum despite her own doubts about outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his party.

“Having a woman president, for me as a Mexican woman, it’s going to be like before when for the simple fact that you say you are a woman you’re limited to certain professions. Not anymore.”

She said the social programs of Sheinbaum’s mentor were crucial, but that deterioration of cartel violence in the past few years was her primary concern in this election.

“That is something that they have to focus more on,” she said. “For me security is the major challenge. They said they were going to lower the levels of crime, but no, it was the opposite, they shot up. Obviously, I don’t completely blame the president, but it is in a certain way his responsibility.”

Mexicans are voting Sunday in historic elections weighing gender, democracy and populism, as they chart the country’s path forward in voting shadowed by cartel violence.

The race is historic. With two women leading the contest, Mexico will likely elect its first female president. The elections are also the country’s biggest, with more than 19,000 congressional and local positions up for grabs.

The Associated Press’ reporting team on the ground will be providing updates throughout the day.