A final vote count yesterday confirmed Enrique Pena Nieto’s decisive win to become the new Mexican President, but the handsome politico must still overcome legal challenges.

Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who came in second and lost by 6.62 per cent to Mr Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said he will legally challenge the results, claiming the winner “bought” votes, enjoyed overwhelmingly positive media coverage and broke campaign spending limits.

Mr Lopez Obrador lost the last presidential election in 2006 by less than one per cent, claimed fraud and held protests that virtually paralysed Mexico City for more than a month. He has not called for protest marches this year.

Mr Pena Nieto won with 38.21 per cent of the vote against 31.59 per cent for Mr Lopez Obrador with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), according to the independent Federal Electoral Institute.

The official results were announced after a painstaking vote-by-vote recount of results at a little more than half of the country’s 143,144 polling stations that dragged on far longer than expected.

The youthful Mr Pena Nieto, 45, is married to glamorous soap opera star Angelica Rivera and benefited from family connections with powerful old guard PRI politicos, as well as a savvy media team that carefully stage-managed his appearances.

Mr Pena Nieto, who declared victory late Sunday, inherits a country beset by a brutal drug war and an economy struggling to create jobs.

Meanwhile Octavio Aguilar, a senior Vazquez Mota campaign official, estimated that the PRI spent up to $500 million getting Mr Pena Nieto elected, shattering the legal campaign spending limit of $30 million.

“That’s is the problem with this democracy – the one who has the most money buys the election,” Mr Aguilar said.

World leaders, including US President Barack Obama, have already congratulated Mr Pena Nieto on his apparent victory.