Meet the four candidates vying to become Mexico's president

Four candidates are in the race to become Mexico's next president in Sunday's election. 

Here's a glance at the hopefuls:

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

In his third attempt at the presidency, Lopez Obrador, a 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, is the front-runner in most polls.

Lopez Obrador lost the 2006 election by just 0.56 percent to conservative Felipe Calderon, alleged electoral fraud and saw his supporters camp out in protest for months on one of the capital's busiest avenues.

In 2012, he lost a less controversial race to current President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Born in the southern Gulf Coast state of Tabasco, Lopez Obrador frequently rails against the country's entrenched elite and vows to defeat the "mafia of power" he blames for rampant corruption.

Affiliation: National Regeneration Movement, or MORENA. 

Ricardo Anaya

Anaya, 39, a conservative lawyer with a doctorate in political science, is the youngest candidate to make the presidential ballot in modern Mexican history. 

His supporters see him as a forward-looking technology devotee and an astute student of politics, while critics call him a calculating and manipulative politician.

Anaya got his start in politics at just 18 years, became a lawmaker in 2012 and later rose to be the speaker of Mexico's lower house of congress. 

He assumed the lawmaker post as a result of rules allotting seats proportionally to parties, and has never won a competitive electoral race.

Affiliation: National Action Party, or PAN, which is part of the leading coalition.

Jose Antonio Meade

A 49-year-old lawyer with a PhD in economics from Yale, Meade is a longtime technocrat and a five-time Cabinet official who served under two different parties.

Those close to him say public service is baked into his DNA, and Meade has served as secretary of energy (2011), the treasury (2012), foreign relations (2012), social development (2015) and the treasury again (2016).

Even though Meade was not a member of Pena Nieto's ruling party, he was picked as its candidate on the theory that an outsider would have better luck given widespread discontent over corruption, rising violence and a sluggish economy.

But he has struggled to escape voter anger with the ruling party, which dominated nearly all aspects of Mexican politics for most of the 20th century, and he is seen as running in third place.

Affiliation: Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Jaime Rodriguez

Rodriguez, 57, is governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon and the first person to win a Mexican statehouse as an independent.

He broke a 30-year alliance with the PRI to make that gubernatorial run in 2015 and was previously mayor of Garcia, near the city of Monterrey, from 2009 to 2012.

Rodriguez has railed against the traditional political parties and refused government funding for his presidential campaign. 

During a debate in April, he suggested cutting the hands off politicians who steal. Asked by the moderator if he meant that literally, he doubled down and said he would propose a bill to sanction such punishment.

Polls say he's trailing in single digits at a distant fourth.

Affiliation: Independent.