MEXICO CITY—Mexicans began voting Sunday in a presidential election expected to make former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador the country’s first leftist president since the 1980s.
Pre-election surveys gave Mr. López Obrador, who made the fight against corruption the theme of his campaign, more than a 20-percentage-point lead over the other two main candidates, conservative Ricardo Anaya and José Antonio Meade of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
For many voters, the word of the day is “change”—change from traditional political parties seen as venal, from soaring criminal violence across the country, and from a free-market economic model that has sparked an investment boom but has yet to reduce poverty or inequality.
Margarita Silva, a 45-year-old English teacher in central Hidalgo state, said she voted for President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012, but said she was casting her ballot this time for Mr. López Obrador. “He won’t be able to get rid of corruption from one day to the next, but at least he can make a start,” she said as she lined up early Sunday at a polling station.
About 89 million Mexicans are registered to cast ballots in the election for the president, the 500-member lower house of congress, the 128-member senate, nine governorships and thousands of state and municipal officials and legislators.
If Mr. López Obrador wins as expected, the election could signal potentially far-reaching changes to the country’s foreign policy—including charting a more distant relationship with the U.S.—and to Mexico’s free-market economic model, where the leftist is likely to put a greater emphasis on using the government to try to help the poor.
“Mexican voters are about to shake up the political establishment and profoundly reshape the country’s political map,” said Alberto Ramos, chief economist for Latin America at Goldman Sachs.
The 64-year-old leftist is Mexico’s best-known politician. This is Mr. López Obrador’s third presidential campaign after he narrowly lost the election in 2006 and 2012. He was so angry about his razor-thin loss in 2006 that he called protesters to the streets and declared himself the legitimate president, even holding his own swearing-in ceremony. His response frightened many middle-class voters and prompted critics to say he has an authoritarian streak.
This time around, the silver-haired politician tried to broaden his base by adopting a less confrontational approach. He has pledged to keep Mexico’s economy open to trade, respect the central bank’s autonomy and keep a lid on public debt. He even made an alliance with a Christian evangelical party. When attacked by rivals, his response has been “love and peace.”
He has campaigned as an outsider to Mexico’s traditional parties and even set up his own party in 2014 called the Movement for National Regeneration, or Morena, which means dark-skinned in Spanish. That strategy paid off as voters grew angry about corruption among the established parties, including the ruling PRI and Mr. Anaya’s conservative National Action Party, or PAN, which governed the country from 2000 to 2012.
Under Mr. Peña Nieto, corruption scandals have taken center stage. A dozen governors of Mexican states, mainly from the PRI but also from PAN, have been convicted, arrested or accused of embezzlement and other crimes in recent years. Several remain on the lam.
“The perception among Mexicans is that the PRI and the PAN failed Mexico, and that they are deeply corrupt. It seems many Mexicans believe a new, different approach is needed,” said José Woldenberg, a political analyst and former head of the electoral agency.
Despite his focus on corruption throughout the campaign, Mr. López Obrador hasn’t offered specific proposals on how to address graft. Instead, he has said other elected officials would follow his example of honesty.
His opponents also pledged to fight corruption. The 39-year-old Mr. Anaya vowed to create an independent prosecutor’s office and go after graft in Mr. Peña Nieto’s administration, while the PRI reached outside its ranks to pick Mr. Meade, who has a reputation for probity and held cabinet posts in both PAN and PRI governments.
The campaign was expected to be a closer contest between Mr. López Obrador and Mr. Anaya. In late February, however, Mexico’s Attorney General’s office said it was investigating Mr. Anaya in a money-laundering probe tied to the sale of an industrial warehouse to a local businessman. Mr. Anaya rejected the allegations, and many in Mexico saw the charges an attempt by the government to damage Mr. Anaya and position Mr. Meade as the only alternative to Mr. López Obrador.
Whatever the case, Mr. Anaya’s rise in the polls stalled, allowing Mr. López Obrador to pull away.
Mr. López Obrador remains a divisive enough figure that the population is roughly split into his supporters and opponents. Messrs. Anaya and Meade drew support from voters who view Mr. López Obrador as a throwback to the country’s leaders of the 1970s, strident nationalists who used patronage to win voters and eventually bankrupted the country.
José Luis Rangel, a 27-year-old civil engineer, said he is backing Mr. Meade because he values Mexico’s economic stability, which he thinks could be put in danger by Mr. López Obrador. “I don’t think (López Obrador’s) campaign promises are realistic,” he said at a polling station near Mexico City’s famous Basilica de Guadalupe, the shrine to the country’s patron saint.
Mr. López Obrador’s proposals center on increased social spending and public investment, including a public-works program to employ 2.3 million young people, grants to 300,000 university students and a plan to double the amount of money older people receive as retirement pensions. He compares his plan to the New Deal under U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
To pay for his plan, Mr. López Obrador said he won’t raise taxes but instead will get some $25 billion a year by ending corruption and save $20 billion more a year through an austerity plan that slashes the salaries and perks of top public officials.
Economists say that the candidate’s estimates of savings from corruption and austerity are unrealistic and that he will face a choice between scaling back his promises or taking on debt, possibly damaging Mexico’s hard-won financial stability.
Investors will watch how Mr. López Obrador reacts to what many see as an all-but-assured victory. His margin of victory, whether his Morena party claims a majority in the lower house, and even the language he chooses in his victory speech could contain clues about his presidency.
“If he congratulates other candidates, urges those who didn’t vote for him to unite, and calls for strong ties with the private sector in his speech, then the market will rally,” said Alberto Ramos, chief Latin American economist for Goldman Sachs.
A landslide could make Mr. López Obrador the first president to have control of congress since 1997, allowing him to push through his agenda more easily. That agenda includes potentially reversing or slowing key reforms carried out by Mr. Peña Nieto like opening Mexico’s energy sector to private investment and an educational overhaul for Mexico’s public schools. He is also seeking to legalize binding referendums on a range of issues, a tactic used by the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to concentrate power.
Many investors have taken heart from the fact that Mr. López Obrador governed without piling on debt as mayor of Mexico City. Mexico’s peso has weakened only slightly in recent months, due mostly to pessimism over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement and higher U.S. interest rates.
Most of the risk of an AMLO, as Mr. López Obrador is called, presidency has already been priced into the market. Because of Mexico’s independent central bank and close ties to the U.S. economy, the peso is seen by many investors as a hedge against volatility in other emerging-market currencies. But a decisive victory by Mr. López Obrador could shake that confidence.
“The market wants to see as many counterweights as possible,” said Sergio Luna, chief economist at Citibanamex in Mexico City. “If we see an AMLO win with a strong margin and strong results in Congress, the market will view this negatively.”
The winner of the election will inherit the renegotiation of the Nafta trade deal, talks that have stalled in recent weeks. Mr. López Obrador has said he wants to keep the trade deal. He has backed some of President Donald Trump’s proposed changes for the deal, like boosting wages in Mexico. But he has also vowed to defend Mexico from any attacks by the U.S. president. “We won’t be treated like a piñata,” he said recently.
Write to Juan Montes at juan.montes@wsj.com and Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com
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