Claudia Sheinbaum is set to win 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, Ednews reports citing Reuters.

At least five exit polls showed Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, winning the presidency, with pollster Parametria forecasting a landslide 56% of the vote for the ruling MORENA party candidate. Parametria forecasted opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez to take 30% of the vote.

Provisional results trickle in and show Sheinbaum leading with 59% of the vote, versus 29% for Galvez, with 5% of total votes counted.

Imminent victory for 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.

Sheinbaum would be the first woman to win a general election in the United States, Mexico, or Canada.

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

"Before we couldn't even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I get to live it," Montiel added.

Sheinbaum has a complicated path ahead. She must balance promises to increase popular welfare policies while inheriting a hefty budget deficit and low economic growth.

She has vowed to improve security but has given few details and the election, the most violent in Mexico's modern history with 38 candidates murdered, has reinforced massive security problems. Many analysts say organized crime groups expanded and deepened their influence during Lopez Obrador's term.