MEXICO CITY— Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a divisive former Mexico City mayor who vowed to upend Mexico’s corrupt status quo, cruised to the biggest win in nearly four decades in Sunday’s presidential election, moving the country’s politics sharply to the left and dealing a major blow to its established political parties.
Mr. López Obrador got nearly 54% of the vote, according to more than half the ballots counted by Mexico’s election agency. That was more than 30 percentage points more than his closest rival, conservative Ricardo Anaya, who tallied about 23% of the vote. José Antonio Meade of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, garnered just 15% of the vote.
The margin of victory and the winner’s total was the largest in Mexico since 1982, before the country became a full democracy.
Mr. López Obrador’s coalition, led by his Movement for National Regeneration, or Morena, also claimed an outright majority in both houses of Mexico’s congress, winning 312 of 500 seats in the lower house and 72 of 128 seats in the senate, according to estimates by the election agency seen by The Wall Street Journal. It also won four of eight state governor races, and Mexico City’s mayor’s office.
The results mark the first time since 1997 that a Mexican president will have control of congress, and also the first time since 1997 that the same party will control both the federal government and Mexico City.
Early Monday, Mr. Lopez Obrador thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for sending congratulations on Sunday night. He said Mexico would look to keep a respectful relationship with the Trump administration. President Donald Trump congratulated Mr. López Obrador in a tweet, saying, “I look very much forward to working with him.”
“We are not going to fight,” Mr. López Obrador told Televisa network. “We will extend our open hand to look for a relationship of friendship with the U.S.” He added he would act “with a lot of prudence” in any response to Mr. Trump’s often bellicose tweets.
Late Sunday, the leftist’s victory prompted scenes of jubilation across Mexico City. As Mr. López Obrador, who has made an austere lifestyle his hallmark, was driven in his own Volkswagen Jetta to Mexico City’s historic Zocalo central square to give his victory speech, cars honked their horns in celebration, passersby waved to him, and passengers of buses leaned out the windows to cheer him on.
In his victory speech, he declared a new era for Mexico’s democracy on behalf of the poor. But he also tried to ease concerns that he will return Mexico to a bygone era of all-powerful presidents, vowing to respect the independence of key institutions like the central bank, keep the country’s finances stable, and allow business to operate freely.
“We will create an authentic democracy. We are not trying to build a dictatorship, either overt or hidden,” he said to supporters’ cheers.
So far, financial markets appeared to be taking the former mayor’s victory in stride. The Mexican peso was weaker early Monday at 20.10 pesos to the U.S. dollar, compared with 19.91 late Friday, but still stronger than its recent lows against the greenback.
The result upends Mexico’s politics and its traditional parties and marked a sharp rebuke of President Enrique Peña Nieto and the ruling PRI—a party that governed Mexico unchallenged for most of the 20th century and which returned to power in 2012 after 12 years in opposition. The PRI had its worst result since its founding in the late 1920s, and was projected to win roughly 43 seats in the 500-member lower house compared with 204 currently.
Mr. López Obrador’s victory 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.
His landslide win was a major boost for the left in Latin America, where leftist leaders in Brazil and Argentina have been removed from power and others in Venezuela and Nicaragua have been discredited as autocrats.
Mr. López Obrador is a widely known and controversial politician in Mexico. Supporters see him as the only hope for cleaning up Mexican politics; critics view him as a messianic populist. Mr. López Obrador narrowly lost the presidential elections in 2006 and 2012.
This time around, he capitalized on growing discontent among voters after a series of corruption scandals under Mr. Peña Nieto. At least 10 governors of Mexican states, mainly from the ruling party, or PRI, have been convicted, arrested or accused of embezzlement and other crimes in recent years. Several remain on the lam.
For many voters, the election was about “change”—change from traditional political parties they see as venal, from soaring criminal violence and from an open economy that has sparked an investment boom without reducing poverty or inequality.
Margarita Silva, a 45-year-old English teacher in central Hidalgo state, said she voted for Mr. Peña Nieto in 2012, but cast 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.
In many ways, the rise of Mr. López Obrador puts Mexico in uncharted waters. He will be the country’s first leftist president since the 1980s, the first from the impoverished south of the country in more than 70 years, and the first president not to represent one of the big two political parties in a century. The 64-year-old will also be the oldest president since 1913.
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 save some $25 billion lost each year by ending corruption and save another $20 billion more a year through an austerity plan that slashes the salaries and perks of top public officials.
Many 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.
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His victory may return Mexico to its foreign policy of the 1960s and 70s that sought to chart an independent course from the U.S. and allied itself with leftist governments around Latin America. He is likely to end, for instance, Mexico’s increasingly outspoken criticism of Venezuela’s authoritarian government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Already, leftists around the region, who have suffered a wave of election setbacks in recent years, took heart from Mr. López Obrador’s victory. Among those who expressed support were Venezuela’s Mr. Maduro, Argentina’s ex-President Cristina Kirchner, Brazil’s former leader Dilma Rousseff and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.
It could also mean a more distant relationship with the U.S., ending a period of the past 30 years that led to increasing cooperation in areas ranging from migration and terrorism to fighting illegal drugs. During that time, most of Mexico’s presidents had been educated at U.S. universities, especially the Ivy League, and spoke English.
Mr. Lopez Obrador, by contrast, grew up at a time when the U.S. was considered Mexico’s historic enemy. He admired Cuba and former Chilean socialist leader Salvador Allende, who was toppled in a U.S.-backed coup. A baseball fan, he has rarely traveled outside Mexico.
“López Obrador is the least international Mexican president in a long time,” said Moises Naim, a former Venezuelan trade minister and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This will be a Mexico that looks inward.”
Ties between the U.S. and Mexico have suffered under Mr. Trump and could be strained further under Mr. López Obrador. He has vowed to be “prudent and respectful” of Mr. Trump, but has also said he would confront him, even on Twitter, if he continues bullying Mexico.
Upon taking office, Mr. López Obrador will be met with the highest expectations by voters since the 2000 election when conservative Vicente Fox ended the PRI’s 70 year hold on power. Since then, many Mexicans have felt disillusioned by a democratic experiment marked by weak economic growth, corruption and a homicide rate has roughly tripled from 2000 to now.
Much of Mr. López Obrador’s appeal to voters and his governing plan center on his simple diagnosis of what ails Mexico: a “mafia of power” made up of leading politicians and businessmen who he says have looted the country and kept back ordinary Mexicans. In ending that, he promises the country’s fourth big transformation, after the 1821 independence from Spain, liberal reforms in the mid-1860s, and the 1910 revolution.
Mr. López Obrador, however, hasn’t offered specific proposals on how to address graft, saying other elected officials would follow his example of honesty.
Many believe Mr. López Obrador is a danger for Mexico’s young democracy. He barely tolerates criticism and has railed in the past against institutions that disagree with him. He has repeatedly said he mistrusts civil society.
Relations with Mexico’s top businessmen promise to be contentious. He has vowed to cancel a notable education overhaul that established merit-based exams and reassess the opening of the oil industry to private companies—two of the major achievements of Mr. Peña Nieto’s term that are defended by the private sector.
—Anthony Harrup, José de Córdoba and Héctor Hernández contributed to this article.
Write to Juan Montes at juan.montes@wsj.com and Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com
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