Close election in Costa Rica

[minionofmidas]

With 64% of ballots counted, Oscar Arias (center-right, president 1986-90, considered the favorite aforehand) has 40.7% of the vote, Otton Solis (center-left) 40.2%.

[minionofmidas]

Checked the Election site... they're at 85% already, but the result's the same. Well, Arias is down to 40.6%.
Interesting regional breakdown, the much more densely populated interior areas voting narrowly for Solis, the coastal areas voting for Arias by wide margins.

[minionofmidas]

Edit to that:
They're both center-left, actually. Arias runs for the PLN, the traditional social-democratic party in Costa Rica. In the House elections (pr ... I think), they're polling 36%. Solis is running for a fairly new party and is running largely on a platform of opposition to CAFTA. His party is taking about 25%. The third placed candidate at about 8% is a Libertarian, by the way, while the traditional centre-right party's (to which the current president belongs) candidate is polling at under 4% - and the party is polling at no more than about twice that.


Ah, interesting, ag. Arias does seem to be winning, just by a tiny margin. (I *think* there's no runoff, might be wrong.)

[minionofmidas]

Costa Rica is of course justly famous for discovering the secret to stability for small-sized poorish countries ... abolish the army. It won't do you any good against any serious threat (against a US-backed invasion, say) and it's a perpetual internal security risk.

And Costa Rica doesn't seem to ever have had the type of hard-right politicos found elsewhere between Mexico (exclusive) and Colombia (inclusive) ... I wouldn't say they're a bit to the right of others in the region, then.

[minionofmidas]

The four provinces where Arias is leading are the four provinces with the highest percentage of outstanding votes.

(EDITED. I claimed "Solis" here before...not sure why)

[minionofmidas]

I've looked it up, and you need to be ahead and poll at least 40%...so no runoff this year.

The count hasn't progressed much overnight - they're not at 88.4% counted, and Arias' lead is down to 0.22 percentage points, so this is still up in the air.

Solis is a former member of the PLN. Apart from opposition to CAFTA, he seems to oppose any other proposed libertarian-style reform ideas out there too - in a sense this is a Schröder vs Lafontaine election.

Now ... as to where the former Christian Democrat votes went ...

Obviously there's three possible explanations, and the truth is likely somewhere in between:
a) In attempts to become more electable to the right (after a couple of defeats) the PLN has taken over the entire conservative vote base and lost its own vote base entirely. This just don't sound right, though.
b) The PLN gets the same votes as ever. The traditionally conservative voting people voted for the anti-PLN candidate.
c) It's a full realignment, away from social issues (churchgoers voting Christian Democrat, social liberals PLN) over to economic issues (friends of the welfare state voting Citizen Action, libertarians PLN).
I think I'll have a look for the regional breakdown of the last elections...

[minionofmidas]

Hmmm....
Psephos doesn't have regional breakdown for 2002, only for 1998.
Still there's a clue in the 2002 results too: In the first round the Christian Democrat got 38%, the PLN candidate 31% and Solis 26%, while in the runoff the Christian Democrat got 58% of the vote, which implies most of Solis' voters preferred them.

In 1998, C.R. still had its traditional party system. The Christian Democrat won, 46.9%-44.4%

By department - Christian Democrat vs PLN
Alajuela 46.9 - 45.7
Cartago 44.3 - 47.7
Guanacaste 55.6 - 40.6
Heredia 43.4 - 46.3
Limón 59.6 - 32.3
Puntarenas 56.2 - 38.6
San José 42.9 - 46.7

Compare 2006 - PAC vs PLN
Alajuela 44.0 - 40.1
Cartago 39.1 - 39.8
Guanacaste 31.4 - 49.7
Heredia 43.8 - 39.0
Limón 29.6 - 40.6
Puntarenas 29.9 - 47.3
San José 42.6 - 38.7

This would seem to imply that the PLN has indeed switched places, lost its left voters and taken over the right - it held one departments, gained three and lost two while only one eludes it!
I got to find 2002...

[minionofmidas]

2002
First round (Pacheco - PLN - Solis)
Alajuela 37.8 - 34.1 - 24.7
Cartago 35.4 - 31.8 - 28.4
Guanacaste 44.3 - 40.6 - 12.1
Heredia 36.1 - 26.8 - 33.2
Limón 48.6 - 28.4 - 14.9
Puntarenas 45.1 - 33.8 - 15.8
San José 36.6 - 28.5 - 31.1
the link to the second round results appears to be broken.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, the data for the coastal departments do indeed point to Arias winning the Conservative vote and Solis the traditional PLN vote ... and the inland departments are of course to close to allow any calls whatsoever.
Notice how badly Solis did on the coasts in 2002.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, they've given themselves two weeks for that.

[minionofmidas]

You beat me for the figures.
I wasn't aware of the fact it's not final ... my newspaper made it out to be...