Mexico’s Historic Elections, Explained

When as many as 99 million Mexican voters head to the polls on June 2, they will be casting their ballots in what is certain to be a groundbreaking national vote—no matter who triumphs.

That’s because this election’s top two presidential candidates are both women, effectively guaranteeing that the country will soon elect its first-ever female leader. And then there’s the sheer number of positions at stake: Beyond the presidency, some 20,000 positions are available, including 128 senatorial seats and 500 congressional representative spots.

“It is a historical election cycle for Mexico, not only because it’s its biggest election in its history,” said Lila Abed, the acting director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center. “Everything is set so that Mexicans elect the first female president in the country.”

Mexico’s next leader will be taking the reins of a country grappling with surging cartel violence, sluggish economic growth, sweeping corruption, and a migration crisis. Mexico has also grown deeply polarized under popular incumbent President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), who expanded the military’s mandate and ramped up efforts to weaken the country’s democratic institutions, including by stripping funding from Mexico’s electoral agency and attacking the judiciary.

Here are the key things you need to know as Mexico readies for its landmark election.

Who is running?

The two top contenders for the presidency are Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor representing the governing left-leaning Morena party, and former Sen. Xóchitl Gálvez, a tech entrepreneur representing a three-party opposition coalition.

Between the two, Sheinbaum is the clear front-runner. She is the protégée of López Obrador, who has enjoyed high approval ratings throughout his presidency but is constitutionally prohibited from running for another term. Over the course of his six years in office, López Obrador has railed against the media and taken steps to weaken the country’s democratic institutions, pushing for controversial policies that have sparked sweeping protests. Yet he also reduced poverty, raised the minimum wage, and expanded a popular pension program, all of which have boosted his standing among many Mexicans.

Sheinbaum is hoping to capitalize on that support. “She’s riding on a wave of popularity by López Obrador,” said Falko Ernst, an expert in Mexican politics at the International Crisis Group. “She’s been really careful not to overly criticize his government and really not offer too much of a fine-grained profile that opposition and others could use as points of attack against her.”

On the campaign trail, Sheinbaum has pledged continuity with many of López Obrador’s policies, including by increasing the minimum wage and continuing his massive infrastructure projects. She has also expressed support for López Obrador’s controversial constitutional reform proposals that, if passed, analysts warn would further undermine the country’s democracy. The fate of those proposals will depend on whether they get the required two-thirds supermajority support in Congress.

The big question, analysts say, is whether Sheinbaum will choose to chart a more independent political path if she is elected. “Whether she decides to really govern as a mere reflection of López Obrador or makes her own mark remains a mystery,” Abed said.

Gálvez, on the other hand, is a staunch critic of López Obrador’s who represents more pro-business, pro-market interests. She has campaigned hard against López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” security strategy, declaring that “hugs for criminals are over.” The stated aims of that strategy, which López Obrador campaigned on, were to demilitarize the country and tackle the roots of organized crime by boosting educational and economic opportunities.

However, in practice, López Obrador actually “strengthened the armed forces’ power and expanded their role in society,” journalist Jared Olson wrote for Foreign Policy in 2022, which raised the risk of human rights abuses. Meanwhile, violent crime continued to ravage the country: More people have been murdered or gone missing during López Obrador’s six-year term in office than during any other Mexican president’s term, the Financial Times reported.

Gálvez said the “hugs not bullets” policy has failed. “The bullets have been for citizens,” she told the FT. Her approach would be to pay police better and invest more in security, she said. She has also pledged to strengthen checks and balances in the government.

But the coalition she has aligned herself with may be dampening her prospects. “She’s running under old party names, under old brand names,” Ernst said. Many Mexicans don’t see the parties as “feasible alternatives for turning things around because they stand for the old days of corruption and bad security policies, amongst other things.”

What do the polls say?

Polls indicate that Sheinbaum will triumph by a wide margin. She has maintained a commanding lead, with some polls in March giving her a roughly 30-percentage-point lead over Gálvez. According to data from the Bloomberg Poll Tracker in May, Sheinbaum held 57 percent of votes, while Gálvez had 30 percent.

But Abed, the Wilson Center expert, said she expected the election’s ultimate results to be closer than some of the polls are currently projecting. While Sheinbaum does sustain a clear advantage over Gálvez, she said, “I perceive that the difference is actually much narrower than 30 points.”

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What are the key issues that voters care about?

Security tops the list of issues driving voters to the polls. Since López Obrador began his term in 2018, Mexico has logged over 170,000 homicides—more than a quarter more murders than were recorded under his predecessor. Over 111,000 people in Mexico have been “forcibly disappeared” since numbers were first recorded in 1962, according to Mexican authorities, and the country is home to one of the world’s highest femicide rates.

That violence has dominated debates this election season, particularly as powerful crime groups have intimidated and even killed potential candidates in the groups’ bids for influence and power. In the run-up to this election, more than two dozen candidates have already died.

“In terms of the polls, the most important issue is security,” said Luis Rubio, an expert in Mexican politics and chairman of the Center of Research for Development. “Mexicans suffer from extortion, from being assaulted, from being killed. The numbers are staggering in every one of those areas.”

Beyond security, López Obrador’s successor will also be taking the reins of an economy facing sluggish growth, emblematic of the many economic challenges looming over the country. This year, Mexico is expected to record its biggest budget deficit in decades.

During his presidency, López Obrador “substantially increased Mexico’s minimum wage and invested in infrastructure projects in the poorest regions of the country. He has expanded social programs for people over 65 years old and people with disabilities, created new scholarships, and provided resources to farmers and fishermen,” Ana Sofía Rodríguez Everaert wrote for Foreign Policy. “Today, cash transfers of some form reach 71 percent of Mexican households.”

Both Sheinbaum and Gálvez are expected to continue those cash transfers.

How could this election shape the future of Mexico’s foreign policy?

Under López Obrador, who famously once declared that “the best foreign policy is a good domestic policy,” Mexico has turned increasingly inward. The populist leader has been relatively withdrawn on the global stage, shunning major international meetings including G-20 summits and the 2022 Summit of the Americas. “He leaves a legacy in foreign policy that leaves a lot to be desired,” Abed said. “I think that’s one of his biggest weaknesses.”

“If you look at this administration, we’ve seen largely an absence of Mexico on the international stage,” Ernst said. “López Obrador has been very inward-looking. He has been very nationalist in his course and has really failed to sort of propel Mexico to the regional leadership position that many expected to take up.”

One bright spot has been the country’s exploding trade ties with the United States. In 2023, Mexico City officially beat out Beijing to become the top exporter to Washington—the first time that has happened in more than two decades. But that outcome was likely encouraged by other geopolitical headwinds—including the push for nearshoring and rising U.S.-China trade tensions—not by López Obrador’s own efforts, experts said.

“A lot of these economic positive trends that have been felt under the AMLO administration have not been because Mexico has positioned itself as an emerging country very much engaged with the international community,” Abed said. “I just think it got very lucky given the trends that happen around the world.”

Depending on which candidate triumphs—and, in the case of Sheinbaum, how closely she follows in López Obrador’s footsteps—this election could also signal a new chapter in Mexican foreign policy.

“I think we’ll see, potentially, a greater opening toward the international sphere and especially toward Latin America and Central America,” Ernst said, but “it’s still uncertain to what degree.”