Mexicans living in the U.S. vote early in their homeland's historic presidential election

DALLAS — Both of Mexico’s front-running presidential candidates are women — and voters like Diana Garcia of Dallas say they are excited and “proud” to elect the country’s first female president.

Garcia is among the more than 675,000 Mexicans living abroad — the majority of them in the U.S. — who are registered to vote and have the voter identification needed to participate in the election, according to the National Electoral Institute.

With early voting already underway ahead of Election Day on June 2, Mexicans living in the U.S. are getting ready to participate in Mexico’s national election, one of the most consequential in the country's recent history.

While their numbers may seem low compared to the nearly 98 million people registered to vote in Mexico, “that doesn’t mean they’re less important,” Ibero-American University professor and Mexican political scientist Mario Campos said, adding that there has been an increased interest in engaging these voters, “which is a positive sign.”

Many Mexicans in the U.S. have already voted by mail, online and in-person at selected consulates — effectively participating in Mexico's "largest election in its history," according to Lila Abed, acting director of the Mexican Institute at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

Voters are also electing all 628 seats in both chambers of Congress and tens of thousands of local positions, according to the National Electoral Institute.

Campos said the voting by U.S.-based Mexicans seems to respond to a broader effort centered on leveraging the cultural connections between Mexicans residing abroad and their homeland to strengthen economic and political ties between Mexico and the U.S., where 97% of those who have left Mexico live.

“We have fought for over 20 years to see the voice of Mexicans in the United States counted and for the vote to be made more accessible," said Francisco Moreno, co-founder and executive director of the Council of Mexican Federations, a coalition of 14 groups representing the interests of Mexicans living in the U.S.

The stakes of electing the first female president

In this election, voters will mainly decide if Mexico’s path forward is strengthening its traditional government structures or reforming them entirely, according to Campos.

“These are very different views,” Campos said. “The election results will have consequences that are going to lead the country in very different directions.”

Claudia Sheinbaum, the presidential candidate from Mexico's governing political party, Morena — founded by her mentor and the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador — has centered her campaign on "convincing voters that the country is heading in the right direction" and that a vote for her will ensure continuity on social programs said to have helped lift millions out of poverty and reduce violent crimes, according to Campos.

Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, is a physicist and climate scientist and is of Jewish heritage.

López Obrador significantly increased public spending during his term to pay for programs that provide cash payments to older citizens and young people attending school, as well as for food assistance to the neediest. Significant reforms to Mexico’s pension system are also expected to go into effect right before Election Day next month.

For Clara Mejía Orta, 30, pensions are among the top issues motivating her to vote by mail from Los Angeles, the American city with the highest number of Mexican nationals with valid voter identifications.

"A lot of my family members have worked their entire life and are about to retire, but they can't," she said. "There's no money to pay their pensions."

While Sheinbaum's platform may appear to echo Mejia Orta's concerns over prioritizing pensions, Mejía Orta said she feels conflicted about the candidate's potential handling of economic and immigration issues that also matter to her. Before mailing her ballot in, Mejía Orta plans on getting additional insight from her family in Mexico to make her final choice.

Sheinbaum has said that Mexicans who live abroad are crucial to translating foreign policy into "internal well-being" for Mexico, according to Gabriela Cuevas, a former senator and Morena member.

Remittances sent by Mexicans living abroad are considered one of Mexico’s main sources of income, López Obrador has said. A recent BBVA report found remittances to Mexico grew 7.6% in 2023, reaching $63.3 billion. Almost all (96%) came from the U.S.

"The community of Mexicans in the United States not only sends a lot of remittances," Cuevas said in Spanish. "We must support them, protect them and leverage their skills so that they can contribute to the economy, to academia, to sciences."

Jennifer Chavez Ramirez of Los Angeles said she plans to vote for Sheinbaum and will be casting her ballot online, an option that is widely available to any Mexican living abroad who has registered. In previous elections, the online option was offered only in selected Mexican states.

Chavez Ramirez, 28, is a recipient of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and said she has good memories of Sheinbaum from when she visited Mexico City in 2022 through “advance parole,” a program that allowed her to travel to Mexico and ensured that she would be allowed to return to the U.S.

Chavez Ramirez said Sheinbaum welcomed her and other Mexican undocumented young immigrants who've been in the U.S. since they were children and are able to work and study under the DACA program.

"She acknowledged the challenges we face in the United States, and offered encouragement and support," Chavez Ramirez said. "It is important for our experiences and voices to be taken into consideration on both sides of the border."

López Obrador's Morena party dominated in the 2018 election after positioning itself as an alternative against the traditional political parties that had long governed Mexico such as the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, the small progressive Democratic Revolution Party, and the old-guard Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. This is a big reason why Morena's "vision of government" centers around reforming Mexico's judicial system and local governments, according to Campos.

But presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez of the opposition coalition Broad Front for Mexico — which is made up of more traditional political parties — has been working to convince voters that continuing the Morena regime "puts the country at risk," Campos said.

Gálvez's party argues that health care access and economic development have stalled under Morena and crime rates remain high.

Jorge Álvarez Máynez, the Citizen Movement party's presidential candidate, is running a distant third in the polls.

A first for in-person voting

This is the first election in which Mexican nationals abroad were able to vote in-person in selected Mexican consulates in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

On Monday, Garcia and about 100 other voters cast their ballots for Gálvez at the Mexican Consulate in Dallas, the U.S. city with the second-highest number of Mexican nationals with valid voter identifications.

They all dressed in pink and carried signs that read "marea rosa," Spanish for "pink wave," in support of the movement led by the Broad Front for Mexico coalition.

Supporters of the "marea rosa" believe López Obrador is destroying democracy in Mexico, Garcia said, accusing the president of dismantling government institutions and militarizing the country.

To Garcia, Sheinbaum “is a puppet”of López Obrador and a vote for her is also a vote for him, she said.

Juan Hernandez, a former secretary of migrant and foreign affairs in Guanajuato, Mexico, is a vocal supporter of Gálvez. Hernandez, who is half Mexican and half American, said he plans to vote online.

He believes Gálvez, a senator and tech entrepreneur of Indigenous heritage, represents the change “Mexicans are desperate for,” Hernandez said in Spanish. “That’s why migrants leave the country, because they lack the opportunities they deserve in Mexico. They leave for the U.S. to seek better jobs, to escape crime and find security.”

As a Mexican national in the U.S., Jorge Leal has consistently voted in Mexico's elections by mail.

“A big part of why I vote, knowing my vote as a binational citizen is not as impactful yet, is to honor the work of groups that emerged in the 1980s and ’90s and were created by Mexican immigrants in areas like South East Los Angeles to amplify the community’s voice," Leal, a history professor at the University of California, Riverside said.

Nicole Acevedo reported from New York, Cora Cervantes from Los Angeles, and Kayla McCormick from Dallas.