Will a woman become president? Mexico awaits historic presidential election results: Live

Millions of Mexicans await to learn who will be their next president as provisional results are expected to trickle in over the coming hours.

Polls closed at 6 p.m. Central time in most of Mexico's 32 states. Voters will elect a new president and thousands of other leaders, from local mayors to state governors and federal representatives.

The presidential contest is a three-way race. Claudia Sheinbaum was the clear front-runner heading into election day, according to polls, with Xóchitl Gálvez running a distant second and Jorge álvarez Máynez in third.

Sheinbaum is the former mayor of Mexico City and a political protege of the current – and still popular – President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is affectionately known in Mexico as "AMLO." That alliance has buoyed Sheinbaum's campaign with a tidal wave of momentum for months, and she has enjoyed double-digit leads in the polls.

Mexican presidents serve a single six-year term and aren't eligible for re-election.

Sunday's election is historic for another reason: It's the biggest in Mexican history, according to its National Electoral Institute, with more than 20,600 elected offices up for grabs across the country.

Some 98 million Mexicans are registered and eligible to vote in the election, according to the electoral institute. A majority of them – 51 million – are women.

Biden and AMLO: ‘High-level chess’: How Biden is navigating his relationship with Mexico’s President ‘AMLO’

Sheinbaum takes commanding lead in early results, 2% precincts reporting

Mexico’s National Electoral Institute or INE began releasing the first batch of voting results two hours after polls closed throughout Mexico and the United States. The results are posted and updated every five minutes to INE’s Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) website.

As of 9 p.m. local time in Mexico City, the PREP website had published the results for 808,000 votes. That’s a small fraction of the millions of votes cast in this election.

More than 100 million Mexicans were eligible to vote on Sunday’s elections. Preliminary numbers show voter turnout hovering near 57 percent, although that number has been climbing as more votes come in.

The preliminary results published to date showed Claudia Sheinbaum with an early, but commanding lead, getting 60 percent of votes so far. Her next closest challenger, Xóchitl Gálvez trailed with 28 percent of the votes.

But the counting has just begun. The PREP website shows that only about 2,900 of the country’s 170,000 precincts reporting their results as of 8 p.m. on Sunday. The preliminary results also show that none of the votes cast abroad have been counted

? Rafael Carranza of the Arizona Republic

Exit polls place Sheinbaum ahead of her opponents

Pollster Parametria forecasted Sheinbaum winning a landslide 56% of the vote, according to their exit polls, with opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez on 30%.

Four other exit polls also said Sheinbaum was set to win.

Provisional results will trickle in over the coming hours. Galvez has not conceded and told her supporters to be patient for the official results.

? Reuters

Polls officially closed. When do results come in?

At 6 p.m. Central time polls throughout Mexico and abroad closed. The country's election authorities said that if any citizen was in line, they had the right to exercise their vote even after closing. For folks abroad, those who made it inside the consulate offices by closing time would have 30 minutes to cast their vote.

The tallying system ? known as the Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) ? would begin counting at 8 p.m. CST, the INE said in a statement. Preliminary results could be expected within the hour.

The INE guaranteed voters that its system is secure and resistant to hacks, with an audit that is simultaneously carried out by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Iztapalapa.

”This computer system has modules for capturing digitized records and data, as well as verification and comparison functions between the captured data, as well as the image of the Scrutiny and Computation Record, which ensures that the information that is published in the results module is reliable," the statement reads.

? Diana García of the Arizona Republic

Why is Mexico's election important to the United States?

The winner of Sunday's election faces an arduous task: leading a country of almost 130 million inhabitants besieged by a spiral of drug violence and an economy that is slowing after its post-pandemic recovery.

The next president, must also take on the thornier legacies left behind by Lopez Obrador, including a less confrontational approach to drug cartels, costly infrastructure projects criticized for their environmental damage, and disputes with major trading partners the United States and Canada over policies that allegedly put foreign companies at a disadvantage.

? Diana García of the Arizona Republic and Reuters

'We want to vote!' Polls close with hundreds still waiting in Phoenix

"We want to vote! We want to vote!" This chant was heard across the parking lot in front of the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix, where hundreds of Mexican nationals were left without a chance to vote in the June 2 election as polls closed.

Consulates in Arizona, California and Texas saw the same problem arise as voter turnout exceeded the expectations of Mexico's National Electoral Institute.

From very early hours, Mexican citizens formed long lines at consulates. In Phoenix, voters showed up as early as Saturday night to make sure they got a ballot. As polls closed at 5 p.m. PST, disenfranchised voters angrily demanded that electoral officials at the Phoenix consulate open the doors and allow them to vote.

About an hour before closing, electoral officials at the consulate said an average of 60 people per hour had voted with five polling stations open.

A similar situation unfolded at Mexican consulates in San José, Los Angeles and Fresno, California, and in Houston and Dallas, Texas, where residents voiced discontent about the delays.

-Nadia Cantú and Paula Soria, Arizona Republic

Mexican mothers of disappeared women make plea

The mothers of three missing persons sat in the pews of a Catholic church in Ciudad Juárez on Sunday for a mass in honor of their daughters.

They wore T-shirts with each girl’s face and name. They lay missing persons posters on the floor before the altar.

The women belong to a list of 100,000 officially disappeared people, according to the Interior Ministry's national registry.

The special service on a historic election day was a stark reminder that even as Mexicans prepare to elect their first woman president, the country, and this border city, are still plagued by unsolved disappearances and femicides.

Rosa María Hernández Díaz's daughter, Rocío Ramírez Hernández, disappeared in 2011 at 18 years old. Hernández Díaz had a message for the likely next president, before she left Mass to vote.

“I want to remind her she is a woman and a mother,” she said. “And to please empathize with us, the mothers who have missing sons or daughters, and to help us find them.

Hernández Díaz added, "That’s all we want: that she not forget about us.”

- Lauren Villagran, USA TODAY

5-hour wait times reported in Arizona, Texas and California

Early Sunday, thousands of Mexican citizens gathered at different Mexican consulate offices in Arizona, Texas and California. For many, this election marked the first year in which voters abroad could cast their vote in person at 23 consulates in the U.S., Canada and Spain.

About 1,500 ballots were made available at each polling place, according to Mexico's National Election Institute, the agency running the elections process both in country and abroad.

In Phoenix, over 500 voters braved an excessive heat warning in order to cast their vote, waiting outside the Consulate General of Mexico where the line wrapped around the parking lot in front of the building. According to INE staff, many senior citizens unfamiliar with voting machines have been struggling with the technology, causing major delays in a process that should only take a few minutes.

Long lines and wait times were being reported in Houston and Dallas, Texas, as well.

In San Bernardino, California, Mexicans abroad shared frustration on social channels, saying they waited for more than five hours to cast ballots. The same was reported in Santa Ana and Los Angeles.

Videos posted to social media showed long lines of Mexican voters in Madrid, Paris, Montreal and New York.

More than 187,000 Mexicans living abroad are registered to vote, according to Mexico’s National Electoral Institute.

- Silvia Solis and Nadia Cantú, Arizona Republic and Lauren Villagran for USA TODAY

Violence hits Mexico's historic election 

Multiple attacks against political candidates and their staff have rocked Mexico as campaigning had wrapped up in the country.

Last week, officials reported that an opposition candidate in the city of Cuautla, located in the south-central state of Morelos, was assassinated. On the same day, a mayorship candidate was hospitalized after an attack in the Jalisco state, along with other violent incidents.

Violence as a broader issue has taken center stage in the election, as Mexico's voters look for answers from their local and national leaders. Cartel groups in some parts of the country are also using the election as a play at power, according to the Associated Press, potentially derailing some pivotal anti-violence efforts.

– Marina Pitofsky, USA TODAY

Border residents cast their ballots

Hundreds of voters snaked around the outdoor gymnasium of a private school in a well-to-do neighborhood of Ciudad Juárez waiting to cast a paper ballot.

This industrial powerhouse across from El Paso, Texas, is home to more than 300 factories that pump out everything from car parts to wind blades for export to the United States. It's also notorious for its high level of violence tied to organized crime.

Areli Márquez, 30, said she had been waiting an hour already but was excited to cast her ballot "during a historic moment" when Mexico will elect its first woman president.

Márquez said she is most concerned with education and violence against women.

"I hope that a woman president can reduce the violence and ensure the value of women's rights," she said. Márquez said she wants to see policies and scholarships that would allow the country's youth to study instead of prematurely going to work to earn for their families.

- Lauren Villagran, USA TODAY

Claudia Sheinbaum votes in Mexico City

Surrounded by hundreds of voters and supporters, Sheinbaum cast her ballot to the chorus of “president, president, president!” Sheinbaum voted in Tlalpan, a borough of the sprawling capital city she previously governed as mayor.The candidate with a substantial lead in the polls arrived at her voting station shortly after 10 a.m. to greet the electorate and stand in line with them.Within an hour, she left the venue, applauded by the crowd.-Diana García for the Arizona Republic

Outgoing president 'AMLO' casts his vote

Accompanied by his wife, López Obrador cast his vote just before 10 a.m. Sunday at a polling site along Morena Street, near his residence at Palacio Nacional in Mexico City.This is the last vote he will cast as President of Mexico before handing leadership over to the next country’s leader on Oct. 1.López Obrador was expected to cast his ballot in support of his party candidate Sheinbaum, who has been ahead in the polls by at least 20 percentage points and the expected winner of Sunday’s election.Meanwhile, in Tlalpan, the Mexico City’s borough where Sheinbaum served as delegation chief from 2015-2017, dozens of voters lined up as they waited for the Morena presidential candidate to cast her vote.

- Joanna Jacobo, Arizona Republic

Will Mexico elect its first female president?

Mexican voters are expected to elect a woman ? most likely a woman of Jewish ancestry ? to lead the country, beating its neighboring ally and sometimes competitor, the United States, to that distinction.

Sheinbaum is favored to win and become the next negotiator-in-chief with the U.S. on issues from cross-border trade to immigration and drug and fentanyl trafficking, with consequences that inevitably spill into American households.

Gálvez, a businesswoman and former senator, is trailing second place in polls, all but ensuring that Mexico will elect a female head of state before the U.S. does.

álvarez Máynez is the third candidate and is currently in third place in the polls.

Contributing: Reuters

This story will be updated throughout the day.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Claudia Sheinbaum leads in polls: Live updates on Mexico elections