Exit polls find that Jewish scientist and environmentalist Claudia Sheinbaum has won the election to lead the Mexican capital.

A Jewish woman is set to be the first woman ever to be elected Mexico City mayor, AFP reports.

Exit polls found that Jewish scientist and environmentalist Claudia Sheinbaum won the election to lead the capital with between 47.5 and 55.5 percent of the vote.

Sheinbaum is affiliated with the anti-establishment leftist who looks likely to win the presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The 56-year-old was among the first politicians to leave Mexico's established left-wing party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and join Lopez Obrador's breakaway, Morena, when he formally launched it in 2014, according to AFP.

The following year, she won election as district mayor of Mexico City's Tlalpan neighborhood, Lopez Obrador's own district and one of the 16 "delegations" that make up the sprawling capital of more than nine million people.

A woman, Rosario Robles, previously governed the Mexican capital on an interim basis from 1999 to 2000, but Sheinbaum would be the first woman elected to the post.

Sheinbaum worked as an environmental engineer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She spent four years as a PhD student in California.

Between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews currently reside in Mexico, about 75% of whom in Mexico City. The current Jewish population in Mexico mostly consists of those who have descended from immigrants from the 19th and early 20th centuries.