MEXICO CITY (AP) — Polls closed Sunday for the national election that will likely give Mexico its first female president, but heat, violence and polarization continued throughout election day.

In the municipality of Cuitzeo in the western state of Michoacán, people went to vote even though a candidate for the local council had been shot dead by two assassins on a motorcycle just hours before the election.

Residents cast their votes under heavy police protection – but later passed by the house of murdered candidate Israel Delgado to light a candle for the well-known local politician at an improvised altar in front of his front door.

Voting was largely peaceful across the country, but even if the leading candidate – former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum – wins, she is unlikely to enjoy the same unconditional loyalty as outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Both belong to the ruling Morena party.

In the Zocalo, Mexico City's main colonial-era plaza, Sheinbaum's leadership initially failed to attract the kind of cheering and jubilant crowds that greeted López Obrador's victory in 2018.

Fernando Fernández, a 28-year-old chef, joined the relatively small crowd hoping for a Sheinbaum victory, even though only the very last preliminary vote totals were in. But even he acknowledged there were problems.

“You vote for Claudia out of conviction, for AMLO,” said Fernández, calling López Obrador by his initials, as most Mexicans do. His greatest hope, however, is that Sheinbaum “can improve what AMLO could not, namely the gasoline prices, crime and drug trafficking that he did not fight, even though he had the power to do so.”

28-year-old business economist Itxel Robledo also expressed his hope in the crowd that Sheinbaum would do what López Obrador did not do. “Claudia must employ professionals in every area.”

Elsewhere in town, 29-year-old Yoselin Ramírez said she voted for Sheinbaum but split her vote on other posts because she did not want anyone to have a strong majority.

“I don't want everything to be occupied by the same party so that there is a bit more equality,” she said, without elaborating.

The main opposition candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, a technology entrepreneur and former senator, sought to exploit Mexicans' security concerns and promised to be more aggressive in tackling organized crime.

Nearly 100 million people were registered to vote, but turnout was apparently somewhat lower than in previous elections. Voters also elected governors in nine of the country's 32 states and candidates for both houses of Congress, thousands of mayoralties and other local offices. They were the largest elections the country has ever seen, and they were marked by violence.

The elections were widely seen as a referendum on López Obrador, a populist who has expanded social programs but has done little to curb cartel violence in Mexico. His Morena party currently holds 23 of the 32 governorships and has a simple majority of seats in both houses of Congress. The Mexican constitution prohibits presidential re-election.

Both of the main presidential candidates were women, and both would be Mexico's first female president. A third candidate from a smaller party, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, was far behind in the opinion polls.

Sheinbaum promised to continue all of López Obrador's policies, including a universal pension for the elderly and a program to compensate young apprentices.

Gálvez, whose father was an Otomi indigenous man, rose from selling street snacks in her poor hometown to founding her own technology companies. She ran for a coalition of the main opposition parties and left the Senate last year to focus her anger on López Obrador's decision to avoid drug cartels with his “hugs, not bullets” policy, promising to pursue criminals more aggressively.

The ongoing cartel violence and Mexico's mediocre economic performance were the main issues on voters' minds.

Julio García, a Mexico City office worker, said he voted for the opposition in the central district of San Rafael. “They robbed me twice at gunpoint. We have to change direction, change leadership,” said the 34-year-old. “If we continue like this, we will become Venezuela.”

On the outskirts of Mexico City, in the San Andres Totoltepec neighborhood, election officials marched past 34-year-old housewife Stephania Navarrete, who watched as dozens of cameramen and election officials gathered where leading candidate Claudia Sheinbaum was scheduled to cast her vote.

Navarrete said she plans to vote for Sheinbaum, despite her own doubts about López Obrador and his party.

“For me as a Mexican, having a female president will be like the old days when you were limited to certain jobs just because you were a woman. That's no longer the case.”

She said Sheinbaum's mentor's social programs were critical, but added that the worsening of cartel violence in recent years was her biggest concern in this election.

“That's what they need to focus more on,” she said. “For me, security is the biggest challenge. They said they would reduce crime, but no, the opposite has happened, it's skyrocketed. Of course, I don't blame the president entirely, but in some ways it is his responsibility.”

In Iztapalapa, Mexico City's largest district, 76-year-old housewife Angelina Jiménez said she had come to “overthrow this incompetent government that says we are fine, and yet there are so many deaths.”

She said she was very concerned about the violence plaguing Mexico, which is why she wanted to vote for Gálvez and her promise to crack down on the cartels. López Obrador “says we are better, but that's not true. We are worse.”

López Obrador claims he has reduced the historically high murder rate by 20 percent since taking office in December 2018. But that claim is largely based on a questionable interpretation of statistics. The actual murder rate appears to have fallen by only about 4 percent in six years.

Just as the looming rematch between U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in November highlighted the deep divisions in the United States, Sunday's election showed how polarized public opinion in Mexico is over the country's direction, including its security strategy and how to grow the economy.

In addition to the battle for a majority in Congress, the race for the mayoralty in Mexico City – a post that is now considered equivalent to a governorship – is also important. Sheinbaum is only the latest of many mayors in Mexico City, including López Obrador, who later ran for president. Governorships in large, populous states such as Veracruz and Jalisco are also attracting interest.

In most parts of Mexico, polling stations closed at 6 p.m., and the first preliminary partial results were not expected for several hours.

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Associated Press writer Fabiola Sánchez contributed to this report.

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