While there is much attention and anticipation ahead of the crucial U.S. election later this year, the biggest vote in Latin America will take place this Sunday just south of the border. The people of Mexico will head to the polls to elect a new president, all 628 members of Congress, nine governors, and tens of thousands of local officials nationwide.
This monumental vote, with more than 100 million people registered to cast their ballots, will determine the successor to one of the region’s most popular and influential leaders: Andrés Manuel “AMLO” López Obrador, whose six-year term as president will come to an end on October 1.
In the race for the top job, the clear front-runner is Claudia Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old former environmental scientist and current Mexico City mayor. Representing AMLO’s ruling Morena party, Ms. Sheinbaum enjoys a 17-point lead over her closest rival, Xóchitl Gálvez.
Also 61, Ms. Gálvez is a tech entrepreneur and former senator, backed by an alliance of opposition parties, including the traditional Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, and the center-right National Action Party (PAN) which replaced it in the year 2000.
According to polling averages, Ms. Scheinbaum holds an effective voting intention of 53 percent, compared to 36 percent for Ms. Gálvez and 11 percent for Jorge Álvarez, the Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens’ Movement) party candidate — though distances have narrowed slightly in the last few days.
A protégé of AMLO’s and dubbed the “Ice Lady” by her rivals, Ms. Sheinbaum is poised to make history as Mexico’s first female president and first Jewish head of state.
If results go as expected, it would signify a major triumph for the Morena party and for AMLO himself. Founded by the current president in 2014, this novel left-wing coalition burst onto the Mexican political scene to end a...
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