Claudia Sheinbaum has won a landslide victory to become Mexico’s first female president, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose popularity among the poor helped drive her triumph.

Sheinbaum, a leftwing climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico’s electoral authority.

The ruling coalition led by Sheinbaum’s Morena party was also on track for a possible two-thirds supermajority in both houses of congress, which would allow the coalition to pass constitutional reforms without opposition support. The big win for Sheinbaum was consistent with polls throughout the campaign.

The opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez conceded defeat after preliminary results showed her taking between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote. Jorge Álvarez Máynez, the candidate of the centrist Movimiento Ciudadano, came in third with at least 9.9%.

“For the first time in the 200 years of the republic I will become the first woman president of Mexico,” Sheinbaum told supporters to loud cheers of “presidenta, presidenta” – the feminine form of the country’s top political post.

“We imagine a plural, diverse and democratic Mexico. Our duty is and will always be to look after each and every Mexican, without distinction.”

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