Upcoming elections in Latin America Share This /

(This post was researched and written by CIP Intern Hannah Brodlie.)

Over the next twelve months presidential elections will take place in Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Honduras, Costa Rica and Brazil.

• In Uruguay the first round of legislative and presidential elections were held last Sunday. While the governing center-left Frente Amplio’s candidate, Jose Mujica, a former Tupamaro guerrilla, received a majority 47 percent of the vote, it was not the outright majority necessary to avoid a runnoff against former president Luis Lacalle, who received 28.5 percent. Pedro Bordaberry of the Colorado Party got just 17 percent, and immediately endorsed Lacalle, in an effort to avoid a Mujica victory at the runnoff, which will be held on November 29. The winner will take office on March 1, 2010.

• Chile is facing a three-way race between opposition conservative Sebastian Pinera, Eduardo Frei, the governing center-left Concertación candidate, and Marco Enriquez-Ominami, a 36 year old congressman and film producer. Enriquez-Ominami split from the governing Concertación coalition to run as an independent and is gaining in the polls. There are a total of four candidates on the ballot; the top two will end a run-off election if none wins an outright majority. The first round of voting is December 13. A poll by the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contemporanea (CERC) shows Enriquez-Ominami with 20 percent of the vote, and Pinera leading with 41 percent. The results confirm the likelihood of a tie between Frei and Enriquez-Ominami in the first round of voting. Reuters offers descriptions of each candidate’s positions.

• In Brazil, the presidential race remains steady, according to a September Sensus poll, with Jose Serra, Sao Paulo state governor and senior member of the opposition PSDB, at 40%, Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s chief of staff and chosen successor, at 19%, and everyone else under 10%, in a runoff scenario. In the hypothetical runoff, Bloggings by Boz notes, Serra would beat Rousseff 50% to 25%, with a quarter remaining undecided or not voting. Some analysts have suggested that the Dilma’s fall in popularity is due to recent scandals surrounding the Lula administrations. Lula has dropped a few points in the polls, but he still enjoys a high approval rating of 76.8 percent (down from 81.5 percent). In addition, Dilma underwent chemotherapy for lymphoma earlier this year, however her doctor announced in September that she has beaten the cancer and is in excellent health.

• In Bolivia, president Evo Morales will likely be re-elected on December 6, according to a recent poll by Equipos MORI. 46 percent of respondents said they would vote for Morales, 16 percent for former Cochabamba mayor Manfred Reyes Villa of the New Republican Force (NRF), and 8 percent for Samuel Doria Medina of the National Unity Front (FUN). A quarter of respondents were undecided. Bolivia’s first indigenous President and former coca-grower, Morales was elected in December 2005 as the candidate for Movement to Socialism (MAS).

• President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe, popular for his hardline security policies, has still yet to announce formally whether he intends to run for a third term next year. Colombia's Constitutional Court approved a referendum on whether to amend the constitution to allow Uribe to run again. However, they will not likely rule on the legality of the bid, clearing him to run, until early next year. Electoral authorities say they need at least two months to organize the re-election referendum, which means that the referendum could take place concurrently with March 2010 legislative voting, only two months before the presidential poll. The president's approval rating is 78 percent, and an Ipsos poll suggests that he would win if the election were held today. In a referendum vote, 65% say they would turn out and of those, 88% say they would vote in favor of allowing reelection.
           
  The Colombian newsmagazine Semana recently published a poll of candidate preferences, both with and without Uribe in the running. According the poll, in an election without Uribe, the top three candidates are (in order of popularity) Juan Manuel Santos, Andres Felipe Arias and Gustavo Petro. The first two have served in Uribe's cabinet; the third is the nominee of the country's main leftist opposition party. In a scenario in which Uribe does run - in which case Santos and Arias would not - the current president wins by a landslide; the distant runners-up are Gustavo Petro, Liberal Party nominee Rafael Pardo and Conservative Party politician Noemí Sanin.

• In Venezuela, legislative elections are scheduled for December 2010. The opposition has tried to present a united front, the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, and decided not to boycott this year’s elections as they did in 2005, resulting in a legislature almost totally controlled by President Chávez's supporters since then. They believe that due to Chavez’s recent decrease in popularity, documented by a number of polls, they can win a majority. Both the opposition and Chávez have mentioned the posssibility of moving up the election date to earlier in the year. 

• Elections in Honduras remain uncertain. The Micheletti regime, which took power in a June 28 coup, insists it will hold presidential and legislative elections on November 29, as planned. However, the international community will not recognize the results of the elections unless deposed president Manuel Zelaya is reinstated. However, according to a CID-Gallup poll, if elections were held today, Porfirio Lobo Sosa of the National Party would be elected president with 59 percent of the vote. Lobo is 16 points ahead of his competition, Elvin Santos of the Liberal Party, and Zelaya’s former vice president. While both Zelaya and Santos are from the same party, Santos has distanced himself from the deposed president since the coup.

• Elections will be held in Costa Rica in February. Laura Chinchilla, former vice president and candidate for the governing Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN), is indisputably in the lead with 43 percent of voter support, according to a poll published by La República in August. Otton Solis, founder of the Partido de Accion Ciudadana and known for his opposition to the free-trade agreement with the U.S. that current president Oscar Arias helped push through, is at 26 percent. According to the same La República poll, 72 percent of voters support the idea of a female president, a slight increase from April.