Voting is underway in Mexico’s 2024 election. The outcome is sure to be historic: Mexicans are weighing gender, democracy and populism, as they chart the country’s path forward in voting shadowed by cartel violence.

By MEGAN JANETSKY, MARIA VERZA

Amid a sea of press and applauding supporters, presidential frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum strolled into her small voting site on Mexico City’s south side, waving and hugging men in cowboy hats as women snapped photos.

“Presidenta! Presidenta!” supporters chanted as neighbors stood on their roofs to take photos.

Opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez took selfies with supporters as she waited to vote in the central Mexico City Reforma Social neighborhood.

“Hang in there,” she said. “It is going to be a hard, difficult, contested day, it is not just a formality,” she said.

“There is a great turnout and I said it from the beginning: if people participate Mexico wins.”

Walking amid shouts of “You are not alone Xóchitl” and “We are going to win”, she said she was not nervous. “God is with me.”

Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizen Movement party waded through press with his team trying to avoid trampling other voters waiting their turn to vote.

As she left home to vote, frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters briefly that she was “very happy, very excited” on what she described as a “historic day.”

She said that she had a “quiet” night and that after voting she would come back home to have breakfast.

She called on people to go to the polls. “You have to vote, you have to go out and vote,” the former Mexico City mayor said as she left in a car.

Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador walked out of the National Palace and into a nearby voting location to cast his ballot.

The 70-year-old leader wearing a blue suit ducked into a voting booth to mark his ballot.

López Obrador oversaw a months-long internal campaign in his Morena party to select his successor. Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum emerged victorious in internal polling and received López Obrador’s seal of approval.

She ran a conservative campaign essentially promising to continue her mentor’s policies.

Voters of the Latin American country of 130 million people have started casting their ballots. Voters began lining up before dawn for the historic election.

The election – and Mexican politics in recent years – have been deeply divisive, reflecting polarized Mexican society.

Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum is a clear frontrunner in the race, and is seen as a continuation candidate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party.

Others have turned to opposition presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, who has focused her ire on López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” policy of not confronting the drug cartels.

Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the smaller Citizen Movement party has targeted the youth vote, but has trailed the two women.

At a special voting post on a large Mexico City medical campus where people like on-duty doctors and nurses who can’t get home to vote can cast their ballots, men and women are waiting for polls to open.

Aida Fabiola Valencia said, “yesterday I told my colleagues to go vote, I don’t know who they are going to vote for but it is the first time they are going to be able to elect a woman, who I think is going to play an important role, we (women) are 60% of the population, it is historic.”

There have been female candidates before in Mexico, but this is the first time the two leading candidates — Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez — are women.

Nearby, Mónica Martínez, said “The fact that people vote for a candidate who is a woman implies a lot of change at all social and work levels, that means that it is already starting to get better. It already is. But the fact that it is for a presidential candidacy is much more significant.”

On the fringes of Mexico City in the neighborhood of San Andres Totoltepec, electoral officials filed past 34-year-old homemaker Stephania Navarrete, who watched dozens of cameramen and electoral officials gathering where frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum was set to vote.

Navarrete said she planned to vote for Sheinbaum despite her own doubts about outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his party.

“Having a woman president, for me as a Mexican woman, it’s going to be like before when for the simple fact that you say you are a woman you’re limited to certain professions. Not anymore.”

She said the social programs of Sheinbaum’s mentor were crucial, but that deterioration of cartel violence in the past few years was her primary concern in this election.

“That is something that they have to focus more on,” she said. “For me security is the major challenge. They said they were going to lower the levels of crime, but no, it was the opposite, they shot up. Obviously, I don’t completely blame the president, but it is in a certain way his responsibility.”

Mexicans are voting Sunday in historic elections weighing gender, democracy and populism, as they chart the country’s path forward in voting shadowed by cartel violence.

The race is historic. With two women leading the contest, Mexico will likely elect its first female president. The elections are also the country’s biggest, with more than 19,000 congressional and local positions up for grabs.

The Associated Press’ reporting team on the ground will be providing updates throughout the day.