There are indications that Mexico will almost certainly have its first female president in 2024. This is as a result of the selection of women by the two major political groups. The governing Morena party and the opposition coalition both chose women as their candidates.
Former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum was named Morena’s candidate on Wednesday, despite runner-up Marcelo Ebrard’s last-minute denouncement of the process and demand for it to be redone.
Sheinbaum appears to be the preferred choice of president Andrés Manuel López Obrador who is unable to run again.
She has presented herself as a continuity candidate and stands to benefit from López Obrador’s enduring popularity as well as the support of the state apparatus during the coming campaign.
Morena was having a smooth sail to victory in the June 2024 elections, but the emergence of senator Xóchitl Gálvez as the opposition candidate is a formidable threat to the smooth sail.
Gálvez is a businesswoman who became a senator in 2018. Her political status is rising consistently following her drawing attention with her stories of growing up with an Indigenous father and mestizo mother in Hidalgo state and how she had worked assidously to get to the top.
Using her appeal strategy, Gálvez has risen to become the candidate of a broad opposition coalition that includes the PAN, PRI and PRD, the country’s three oldest mainstream parties.
Both Sheinbaum and Gálvez were chosen through a series of polls intended to show greater transparency and public participation than in the past, when presidents had the habit of handpicking their successors. However, neither process went smoothly.
