Claudia Scheinbaum, the first woman to lead Mexico since the country gained independence more than 200 years ago, won the presidency promising continuity.
The 61-year-old former mayor of Mexico City and longtime leftist ran a disciplined campaign relying on the popularity of her predecessor, and won a landslide victory on Sunday, according to official first results. But now that she has won, Mexicans are waiting to see how Sheinbaum, who is a very different person from her mentor and current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will position herself.
While she is politically close to López Obrador and shares many of his ideas about the role of government in addressing inequality, she is seen as less argumentative than him and more inclined to be guided by data and facts.
Scheinbaum is a scientist. She has a doctorate in energy engineering, and her brother is a physicist. In a 2023 interview with the Associated Press, she said: "I believe in science."
Observers say her faith in science was seen in the measures she took as mayor during the Covid-19 pandemic, when her city of nine million people took a different approach than Lopez Obrador was pursuing nationally.
While the federal government has played down the importance of coronavirus testing, Mexico City has expanded testing. Scheinbaum imposed restrictions on the hours and capacity of restaurants and stores at a time when the virus was spreading rapidly, even though Lopez Obrador wanted to avoid measures that would hurt the economy. She publicly wore masks and called for social distancing in public places at a time when the president was still walking freely among crowds of citizens.
Mexico's chronically high level of violence will be one of her immediate challenges when she takes office on October 1. She hasn't said much on the campaign trail other than that she intends to expand the quasi-military National Guard created by Lopez Obrador and continue his strategy to address the social problems that make so many young Americans easy prey for cartel recruiters.
"To be clear, this does not mean steel fist, wars or authoritarianism," Scheinbaum said of her approach to the gang problem at her final campaign rally. "We will promote a strategy to address the causes and continue to move towards an era where there will be no impunity."
Scheinbaum often praised Lopez Obrador and generally had similar messages to the president himself. She blamed neoliberal economic policies for consigning millions of people to poverty, promised a state with strong welfare, and praised the large state oil company Pemex, while also promising to emphasize clean energy.
"To me, belonging to the left means that - to guarantee all citizens a minimum of rights," Sheinbaum told the AP last year.
In contrast to López Obrador, who seems to have relished his very public battles with other branches of government as well as the media, many observers expect Scheinbaum to be less combative or at least more selective in picking her battles.
"It seems to be going in a different direction," says Yvonne Acuna Murillo, a political scientist at the Iberoamerican University. "I just don't know how much".
Scheinbaum will also be the first person of Jewish origin to head a country whose population is overwhelmingly Catholic.
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