© Tom PhillipsAndrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed to take on country’s corrupt ruling elite and fight poverty.
Millions of Mexicans will head to the polls on Sunday in a watershed election that is almost certain to see a silver-haired leftist who has vowed to take on the country's corrupt ruling elite elected president of Latin America's second largest economy.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City and a friend of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has put promises to eradicate corruption and fight poverty at the heart of his campaign and is expected to cruise to victory.
The election comes against a backdrop of widespread exasperation with political sleaze and soaring violence, with Mexico on track to register its most violent year in recent history in 2018 with more than 13,000 murders already committed.
For months, polls have given López Obrador, or Amlo as most call him, a 20-point lead over his closest rival, a 39-year-old lawyer and yoga aficionado called Ricardo Anaya.
"We can already affirm that Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the next president of the Republic," Claudia Sheinbaum, a close Amlo ally tipped to become Mexico City's next mayor, told jubilant fans at his final pre-election rally on Wednesday night. "I am convinced we are standing at the gates of a new era."
About 100,000 lopezobradoristas had reportedly packed Mexico City's Azteca Stadium for the rock concert-style jamboree - the final act in a punishing six-month campaign that has seen Amlo repeatedly crisscross Mexico with his promises to wipe out corruption and pump the recovered funds into social projects.
"[Corruption] is the main cause of social inequality and economic inequality - and insecurity and violence also stem from corruption," Amlo, who is making his third bid for the presidency, said in his eve-of-election address. "We will get rid of this corruption, this cancer, that is destroying this country."
Outside, street hawkers peddled T-shirts and trinkets emblazoned with the image and the gospel of a man who followers describe in quasi-religious terms and detractors dismiss as Mexico's populist "tropical messiah".
"Peace and tranquility are the fruits of justice," said an Amlo quotation stamped on to one mug. Another carried more words of wisdom from Mexico's likely next president: "Outside the law, nothing; above the law, nobody."
"It's so exciting to know that someone is going to change our Mexico," enthused Esmeralda de Jesús, a 21-year-old campaign volunteer who was among the crowds. "I believe in his project. I believe he can change the country. That's why I'm with Amlo."
Martí Batres, the president of Amlo's party, Morena, in Mexico City, compared the coming sea change to the dawn of the welfare state in 1940s Britain. "It is a historic moment. This is the culmination of so many years of history." Once sworn in as president, in December, Batres said Amlo would immediately act to pacify the country and help the poor by starting to build Mexico's very own welfare state.
Amlo's rise has appalled Mexico's political establishment which - contrary to the views of most analysts - paints him as a Hugo Chávez-style autocrat-in-waiting set to cripple the country's economy. At his last campaign assembly, Anaya told supporters: "This Sunday the future of our country is quite literally at stake - the future of a whole generation."
As well as the presidency, more than 3,000 elected offices are up for grabs on Sunday when more than 156,000 polling stations open at 8am on Sunday.
Voters will also pick 128 new senators, 500 members of the lower house, nine governors and nearly a thousand local representatives.
Alan Riding, a veteran chronicler of Mexican society and politics, said he sensed the country was on the verge of a epochal shift similar to that witnessed in Brazil with the 2002 election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. "I think something has to be shaken up or else you are just going to have [six] more years of violence, corruption, minimal growth and unhappy people," he said.
"When you think what people have been through in Mexico, the notion of some saviour coming along is rather appealing," Riding added. "If you don't think too much about it."
Comment: Historically, almost every election in Mexico has been tainted by fraud, and this will probably not be the exception - especially after a campaign during which the mainstream media and social media targeted AMLO as the man to be demonized - much like Donald Trump was in the US. However, even fraud has its limits. With a 20 point lead, it will be extremely unlikely to see AMLO lose. However, if someone else is declared the winner, the people's fury will be felt on the streets.
'Not even fraud can stop me now' - Mexico's presidential frontrunner AMLO