Sheinbaum scores landslide win to be Mexico's first woman president

Victory is major step for country known for macho culture and traditional values

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

Ms Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with between 58.3 per cent and 60.7 per cent of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico's electoral authority. That is set to be the highest vote tally percentage in Mexico's democratic history.

The ruling coalition was also on track for a possible two-thirds super majority in both Houses of Congress, which would allow the coalition to pass constitutional reforms without opposition support, according to the range of results given by the electoral authority.

Opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez took between 26.6 per cent and 28.6 per cent of the vote, preliminary results show, and Ms Sheinbaum said Ms Galvez had called her to concede defeat.

"For the first time in the 200 years of the republic, I will become the first woman president of Mexico," Ms Sheinbaum told supporters to cheers of "president, president".

Victory for Ms Sheinbaum is a major step for Mexico, a country known for its macho culture and home to the world's second-biggest Roman Catholic population, which for years pushed more traditional values and roles for women.

"I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman," said 87year-old Edelmira Montiel, a Sheinbaum supporter in Mexico's smallest state Tlaxcala.