Mexicans cast their votes on Sunday in the country’s largest ever elections, which were marred by violence.

A total of 38 candidates have been killed during the campaign – along with a similar number of party workers – as the drug cartels made their presence felt. Two people were killed at polling stations in the central state of Puebla on Sunday.

The elections have been widely hailed as historic, and not just because nearly 20,000 public posts – including all 629 congressional seats and the presidency – were at stake.

Autocratic tendencies

The elections have also underscored the advances of the drug cartels under Mr López Obrador. He promised to tamp down the country’s savage drug war and instead address the social and economic root causes of organised crime.

Instead, he has presided over more deaths at the hands of the cartels than any other Mexican president, with some parts of the country turning into no-go zones for security forces – unless they go in in force, heavily armed and in large numbers.

His autocratic tendencies – including undermining the electoral agency and regularly attacking journalists by name in a country where dozens of media workers have been killed in recent years – have also united the opposition against him.

Ms Gálvez represented an electoral alliance of highly unusual bedfellows who were previously diehard political enemies. They include the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, the conservative National Action Party, and the politically amorphous Institutional Revolutionary Party that ruled Mexico for seven decades until 2000 – sometimes by rigging elections.

It remains to be seen whether Dr Sheinbaum will continue Mr López Obrador’s policies and polarising personal style, or seek to establish a softer image and be more open to dialogue with political opponents.