And the Winner Is...

(image taken from the internet)

It really did not come as a surprise that the winner of yesterday's election was Claudia Scheinbaum, the candidate of the ruling Morena party.  I was, however, surprised that she won with a commanding majority, rather than just a plurality, since there were three major candidates.  Votes are still being counted, but it appears that Scheinbaum has been elected with between 58 and 60 percent of the vote.  Her major competitor, Xochitl Gálvez, received between 26 and 28 percent.  Gálvez led an incongruous coalition of the longtime rivals PAN and PRI.  The third candidate, Jorge Máynez, of the Citizens' Movement, appears to have received around 10% of the vote.

Scheinbaum is the first woman President in Mexico's history.  She was born in Mexico City to a secular Jewish family.  Her paternal grandparents immigrated to Mexico from Lithuania in the 1920s, and her maternal grandparents came from Bulgaria in the early 1940s to escape the Holocaust.  Scheinbaum studied at the National University of Mexico where she received a PhD in energy engineering.

She served as Mexico City's head of government as a member of the populist Morena Party created by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).  The question that many political analysts ask is whether Scheinbaum will act independently or will AMLO be calling the shots from behind the scenes.

As a foreign resident of Mexico, I am not allowed to publicly express opinions on Mexican politics.  So, I will say no more.