Claudia Scheinbaum won the presidential election in Mexico

Claudia Scheinbaum won a landslide victory to become Mexico's first female president, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose popularity among the poor helped her triumph.

Scheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidential election with between 58,3 and 60,7 percent of the vote, according to a quick count of samples by Mexican electoral authorities. It should be the highest percentage of votes in the democratic history of Mexico.

The ruling coalition was also on track for a possible two-thirds supermajority in both houses of Congress, which would allow the coalition to enact constitutional reforms without opposition support, according to a series of results released by the electoral authority.

Opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez won between 26,6 and 28,6 percent of the vote, preliminary results showed.

The election, in which Scheinbaum and Galvez faced off, was described as a sea change for women in Mexico.

"For the first time in the 200 years of the republic, I will become the first woman president of Mexico," Sheinbaum told her supporters.

The victory for Claudia Scheinbaum is a big step for Mexico, a country known for its macho culture and home to the world's second-largest Roman Catholic population, which has for years promoted more traditional values ​​and roles for women.

Sheinbaum is the first woman to win a general election in the United States, Mexico or Canada.

"I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman," said 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel in the smallest Mexican state of Tlaxcala, according to Reuters.

"Before we couldn't even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I can live with that," Montiel added.

Claudia Scheinbaum has a complicated road ahead of her. She must balance promises to increase popular social policies while inheriting a huge budget deficit and low economic growth.

She promised to improve security, and the election, the most violent in Mexico's modern history with 38 candidates killed, added to the massive security problems.