Mexico awaits results in an election likely to choose the country’s first female president

Polls closed in a national vote that will likely give Mexico its first female president, but the heat, violence and polarization continued right through election day.

Polls closed in a national vote on June 2 that will likely give Mexico its first female president, but the heat, violence and polarization continued right through election day.

People turned out to vote in the township of Cuitzeo, in the western state of Michoacán, despite the fact that a town council candidate was shot to death by two hitmen aboard a motorcycle just hours before the election.

Residents voted under a heavy police guard — but later passed by the home of murdered candidate Israel Delgado to light a candle for the well-known local politician at an improvised altar on his doorstep.

Nationwide, voting was largely peaceful, but it appeared that even if the front-runner — former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum — wins, she is unlikely to enjoy the kind of unquestioning devotion that outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has enjoyed. Both belong to the governing Morena party.

In Mexico City’s main colonial-era main plaza, the Zocalo, Sheinbaum’s lead did not initially draw the kind of cheering, jubilant crowds that greeted López Obrador’s victory in 2018.

Fernando Fernández, a chef, 28, joined the relatively small crowd, hoping for a Sheinbaum victory even as only the tiniest preliminary vote counts emerged, but even he acknowledged there were problems.

“You vote for Claudia out of conviction, for AMLO,” Fernández said, referring to López Obrador by his initials, as most Mexicans do. 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.”