MEXICO CITY
\nMexicans started voting Sunday in a presidential election dominated by two women \u2014 a historic first in a country with a history of gender-based violence and discrimination.
\nRuling party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor and a scientist by training, had a 17 percentage point lead over her main opposition rival Xochitl Galvez on the eve of the vote.
\nThe only man running, centrist Jorge Alvarez Maynez, was trailing far behind as a particularly violent campaign season marked by a string of candidate murders drew to an end.
\nIt means that, barring a huge surprise, a woman is almost certain to break the highest political glass ceiling in Mexico, where around 10 women or girls are murdered every day.
\nThat prospect motivates other women to succeed and to think \u201cyes, you can,\u201d said Blanca Sosa, a 31-year-old store worker in Mexico City.
\nShe expects Sheinbaum to continue the \u201cgood things\u201d done by outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, such as pensions for the elderly and an increased minimum wage.
\nRicardo Sanchez, however, said he planned to vote for Galvez because of her \u201cbusiness vision.\u201d
\nLopez Obrador\u2019s \u201cpolicy of putting the poor first is to ruin us all so that we\u2019re poor and then he gives to us,\u201d the 55-year-old businessman said in the northern city of Monterrey.
\nSheinbaum, 61, owes much of her popularity to Lopez Obrador, a fellow leftist and mentor who has an approval rating of more than 60 percent but is only allowed to serve one term.
\nNearly 100 million people were registered to vote in the world\u2019s most populous Spanish-speaking country, home to 129 million people.
\nPolls opened at 08:00 am (1300 GMT) in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo and some areas near the US border, with other regions in different time zones due to follow later.
\nThousands of troops will be deployed to protect voters from ultra-violent drug cartels that have gone to extreme lengths to ensure their preferred candidates win.
\nMore than two dozen aspiring local politicians have been murdered during the election process, according to official figures, in a nation where politics, crime and corruption are closely entangled. In a sign of the difficulties of staging elections in cartel hotspots, voting was suspended in two southern municipalities because of violence, local authorities said Saturday.
\n\u201cThe fight against organized crime will be the biggest challenge for the next president,\u201d said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University, in the United States.
\nSecurity was the weakest point of Lopez Obrador\u2019s administration, she told AFP. Sheinbaum has pledged to continue the outgoing president\u2019s controversial \u201chugs not bullets\u201d strategy of tackling crime at its roots.
\nGalvez has vowed a tougher approach to cartel-related violence, declaring \u201chugs for criminals are over.\u201d
\nMore than 450,000 people have been murdered and tens of thousands have gone missing since the government deployed the army to fight drug trafficking in 2006. The next president will also have to manage delicate relations with the neighboring United States, in particular the vexed issues of cross-border drug smuggling and migration.
\nAddressing a cheering crowd of thousands at her closing campaign rally, Sheinbaum said Mexico was going to \u201cmake history\u201d this weekend.
\n\u201cI say to the young women, to all the women of Mexico \u2014 colleagues, friends, sisters, daughters, mothers and grandmothers \u2014 you are not alone,\u201d she said.
\nThe ruling party candidate had the backing of 53 percent of voters as campaigning drew to a close, according to a poll average compiled by research firm Oraculus.
\nGalvez, an outspoken senator and businesswoman with Indigenous roots, was second with 36 percent. Maynez, 38, had just 11 percent.
\nGalvez, 61, often evokes her childhood story of growing up in a poor, rural town in central Mexico where she says she sold candy to help her family.
\n\u201cWhile you danced ballet at the age of 10, I had to work,\u201d she told Sheinbaum, a former student activist who was born in the capital to a family of Jewish immigrants.
\nWhile millions of Mexicans have escaped poverty in recent years, more than a third still live below the poverty line in Latin America\u2019s second-biggest economy.
\nAs well as voting for a new president, Mexicans will choose members of Congress, several state governors and myriad local officials.
\nIn total, more than 20,000 positions were being contested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MEXICO CITY Mexicans started voting Sunday in a presidential election dominated by two women \u2014 a historic first in a country with a history of gender-based violence and discrimination. Ruling party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor and a scientist by training, had a 17 percentage point lead over her main opposition rival […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-410454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n