Mex­i­co’s pro­ject­ed pres­i­den­tial win­ner Clau­dia Shein­baum will be­come the first fe­male pres­i­dent in the coun­try’s 200-year his­to­ry.

Shein­baum, the fa­vored suc­ces­sor of out­go­ing Pres­i­dent An­drés Manuel López Obrador, vowed to con­tin­ue on the di­rec­tion set by the pop­ulist left­ist leader. But the cool-tem­pered sci­en­tist of­fers a sharp con­trast in style — and a break with Mex­i­co’s male-dom­i­nat­ed po­lit­i­cal cul­ture.

“I promise that I am not go­ing to let you down,” Shein­baum said, greet­ing sup­ports in Mex­i­co City’s colo­nial-era main plaza, the Zoca­lo.

The Na­tion­al Elec­toral In­sti­tute’s pres­i­dent said Shein­baum had be­tween 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, while op­po­si­tion can­di­date Xó­chitl Gálvez had be­tween 26.6% and 28.6% and Jorge Ál­varez Máynez had be­tween 9.9% and 10.8% of the vote. Shein­baum’s More­na par­ty was al­so pro­ject­ed to hold its ma­jori­ties in both cham­bers of Con­gress.

The cli­mate sci­en­tist and for­mer Mex­i­co City may­or said that her two com­peti­tors had called her and con­ced­ed her vic­to­ry.

The of­fi­cial pre­lim­i­nary count put Shein­baum 28 points ahead of Gálvez with near­ly 50% of polling places re­port­ing.

The fact that the two lead­ing can­di­dates were women had left lit­tle doubt that Mex­i­co would make his­to­ry Sun­day.

“I didn’t make it alone,” Shein­baum said short­ly af­ter her vic­to­ry was con­firmed. “We’ve all made it, with our hero­ines who gave us our home­land, with our moth­ers, our daugh­ters and our grand­daugh­ters.”

Shein­baum will al­so be the first per­son from a Jew­ish back­ground to lead the over­whelm­ing­ly Catholic coun­try.

She will start her six-year term Oct. 1. Mex­i­co’s con­sti­tu­tion does not al­low re­elec­tion.

The left­ist has said she be­lieves the gov­ern­ment has a strong role to play in ad­dress­ing eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty and pro­vid­ing a stur­dy so­cial safe­ty net, much like her po­lit­i­cal men­tor.

López Obrador’s anoint­ed suc­ces­sor, the 61-year-old Shein­baum con­sist­nt­ly led in polls de­spite a spir­it­ed chal­lenge from Gálvez. This was the first time in Mex­i­co that the two main op­po­nents were women.

“Of course, I con­grat­u­late Clau­dia Shein­baum with all my re­spect who end­ed up the win­ner by a wide mar­gin,” López Obrador said short­ly af­ter the elec­toral au­thor­i­ties’ an­nounce­ment. “She is go­ing to be Mex­i­co’s first (fe­male) pres­i­dent in 200 years.”

If the mar­gin holds it would ap­proach his land­slide vic­to­ry in 2018. López Obrador won the pres­i­den­cy af­ter two un­suc­cess­ful tries with 53.2% of the votes, in a three-way race where Na­tion­al Ac­tion took 22.3% and the In­sti­tu­tion­al Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Par­ty took 16.5%.

Still, Shein­baum is un­like­ly to en­joy the kind of un­ques­tion­ing de­vo­tion that López Obrador has en­joyed.

In the Zoca­lo, Shein­baum’s win did not draw the kind of cheer­ing, ju­bi­lant crowds that greet­ed López Obrador’s vic­to­ry in 2018. Those present were en­thu­si­as­tic, but com­par­a­tive­ly few in num­ber.

Sara Ríos, 76, a re­tired lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor at Mex­i­co’s Na­tion­al Au­tonomous Uni­ver­si­ty, cel­e­brat­ed af­ter hear­ing that Gálvez had con­ced­ed.

“The on­ly way that we move for­ward is by work­ing to­geth­er,” Ríos said. “She is go­ing to work to bring peace to the coun­try, and is go­ing to man­age to ad­vance, but it is a slow process.”

Fer­nan­do Fer­nán­dez, a chef, 28, said he vot­ed for Shein­baum be­cause of her ties to López Obrador, us­ing the pres­i­dent’s in­tials, AM­LO. But his high­est hope is that Shein­baum can “im­prove what AM­LO couldn’t do, the price of gaso­line, crime and drug traf­fick­ing, which he didn’t com­bat even though he had the pow­er.”

The main op­po­si­tion can­di­date, Gálvez, a tech en­tre­pre­neur and for­mer sen­a­tor, had promised a more ag­gres­sive ap­proach to­ward or­ga­nized crime.

In her con­ces­sion speech, she said “I want to stress that my recog­ni­tion (of Shein­baum’s vic­to­ry) comes with a firm de­mand for re­sults and so­lu­tions to the coun­try’s se­ri­ous prob­lems.”

López Obrador claims to have re­duced his­tor­i­cal­ly high homi­cide lev­els by 20% since he took of­fice in De­cem­ber 2018. But that’s large­ly a claim based on a ques­tion­able read­ing of sta­tis­tics. The re­al homi­cide rate ap­pears to have de­clined by on­ly about 4% in six years.

Julio Gar­cía, a Mex­i­co City of­fice work­er, said he vot­ed for the op­po­si­tion be­cause of crime. “They’ve robbed me twice at gun­point. You have to change di­rec­tion, change lead­er­ship,” the 34-year-old said. “Con­tin­u­ing the same way, we’re go­ing to be­come Venezuela.”

On the fringes of Mex­i­co City in the neigh­bor­hood of San An­dres To­tolte­pec, 34-year-old home­mak­er Stepha­nia Navar­rete said she planned to vote for Shein­baum de­spite her own doubts about 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 added that de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of car­tel vi­o­lence in the past few years was her pri­ma­ry con­cern in this elec­tion.

Near­ly 100 mil­lion peo­ple were reg­is­tered to vote and turnout ap­peared to be about 60%, sim­i­lar to ear­li­er elec­tions.

Vot­ers were al­so elect­ing gov­er­nors in nine of the coun­try’s 32 states, and choos­ing can­di­dates for both hous­es of Con­gress, thou­sands of may­or­ships and oth­er lo­cal posts, in the biggest elec­tions the na­tion has seen and ones that have been marked by vi­o­lence.

The elec­tions were wide­ly seen as a ref­er­en­dum on López Obrador, a pop­ulist who has ex­pand­ed so­cial pro­grams but large­ly failed to re­duce car­tel vi­o­lence in Mex­i­co. His More­na par­ty cur­rent­ly holds 23 of the 32 gov­er­nor­ships and a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty of seats in both hous­es of Con­gress.

Shein­baum promised to con­tin­ue all of López Obrador’s poli­cies, in­clud­ing a uni­ver­sal pen­sion for the el­der­ly and a pro­gram that pays youths to ap­pren­tice.

Just as the up­com­ing No­vem­ber re­match be­tween U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has un­der­scored deep di­vi­sions in the U.S., Sun­day’s elec­tion re­vealed how se­vere­ly po­lar­ized pub­lic opin­ion is in Mex­i­co over the di­rec­tion of the coun­try, in­clud­ing its se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy and how to grow the econ­o­my.

MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)