Paraguayan election maps

[Sir John Johns]

I doubt this will generate much discussion but here a thread dedicated to one of the most overlooked country in Latin America, with also one of the most depressing political scene in the whole Western Hemisphere. I've got the data for the 1998 election but not the map of the then-administrative divisions so I'll begin with 2003. I can't guarantee the 100% accuracy of the borders of the districts, especially in the western part of the country, as they have changed in the last two decades at a rapid pace and sometimes at a dramatic extent.

2003 presidential election

The main candidates were:

Nicanor Duarte Frutos, running for the conservative, pro-oligarchy, and arch-corrupt Colorado Party – officially called the National Republican Association (Asociación Nacional Republicana, ANR – which had been in power since 1947, notably under creepy dictator Alfredo Stroessner who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. After Stroessner's downfall, free multiparty elections were organized in 1993 and 1998, both won by the Colorado Party.

Julio César Franco was the candidate of the 'liberal' and arch-corrupt Authentic Radical Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico, PLRA). The PLRA was linked to sectors of the oligarchy and didn't differed that much from the ANR ideologically and politically speaking.

Pedro Fadul was a Catholic businessman without any previous political experience running under the banner of his personal vehicle, the 'center right' populist and anti-corruption Beloved Fatherland Movement (Movimiento Patria Querida, MPQ).

Guillermo Sánchez Guffanti, ran as a proxy for crazy general Lino Oviedo, then in exile in Brazil, who had been sentenced to jail for a coup attempt in 1996 and was strongly suspected of having ordered the murder of Vice President Luis María Argaña. With a good sense of humor, Oviedo named his party, which split from the Colorado Party in 2002, the National Union of Ethical Citizens (Unión Nacional de Ciudadanos Éticos, UNACE). Despite the fact that the UNACE was arch-corrupt, Sánchez Guffanti ran on an anti-corruption platform.

Diego Abente Brun, a sociologist, was the candidate of the officially left-wing National Encounter Party (Partido Encuentro Nacional, PEN), a party that had displayed a great opportunism in the years preceding the election, notably supporting the administration of González Macchi (ANR).

Results were:
Nicanor Duarte Frutos (ANR) 38.3%
Julio César Franco (PLRA) 24.7%
Pedro Fadul (MPQ) 21.9%
Guillermo Sánchez Guffanti (UNACE) 13.9%
Diego Abente Brun (PEN) 0.6%
the four remaining candidates got under 0.5%













The only patterns I can explain are those of Fadul whose surprising good results came from the capture of large parts of the urban vote. The MPQ candidate indeed had good results in Asunción (where he came first with 39.1% of the vote) and its area and in Encarnación (where he also came first with 35.9% of the vote).

Also, Sánchez Guffanti's support seems to be concentrated, for some reasons, in the soy-producing areas. Soy culture (a very mechanized culture which is mostly controled by Brazilian and Argentinian large companies) has experienced a boom in recent years leading to conflict over lands and deforestation.

[Sir John Johns]

2008 presidential election

Seven candidates ran for president, the main ones being:

Blanca Ovelar was the first woman presidential candidate of a major Paraguayan party, running under the banner of the ANR. She won the Colorado Party's nomination after a bitterly contested primary in which she defeated her main opponent, outgoing Vice President Luis Castiglioni, by a razor-thin margin: 49.6-49.0. Ovelar was supported by outgoing president Duarte Frutos (who was by then pretty unpopular) and by the traditionalist wing (Colorado Progressive Movement, MPC) of the ANR while Castiglioni, being a good friend of Donald Rumsfeld, was the representative of the pro-business and pro-U.S. (Colorado Vanguard Movement, MVC) wing.



Ovelar prevailed thanks to the powerful electoral machine of the MPC, winning the most rural departments of the country. Castiglioni, who denounced massive frauds in favor of his rival, won the most urbanized parts of Paraguay, notably Asunción and Central and Alto Paraná (respectively first and second most-populated departments). The primary left the ANR deeply divided and would contributed to the historical defeat of the ruling party.

Fernando Lugo, the 'bishop of the poor', was the candidate of a broad left-wing coalition, the Patriotic Alliance for Change (Alianza Patriótica por el Cambio, APC), which includes, beside various minor left-wing parties (like PEN), the PLRA. While the Liberal Party agreed to support Lugo as its presidential candidate, it demanded that his running mate came from its own ranks. So a primary was organized to select the PLRA candidate for vice presidency and, like the ANR primary, it turned into a hardly fought contest marred by allegations of fraud. Federico Franco (Julio César's own brother) won the nomination defeating his closest rival, Mateo Balmelli, by a margin of 646 votes.

Putschist general Lino Oviedo was the candidate of the UNACE, having been returned from exile and freed from jail. The UNACE was initially part of the APC but ultimately decided to withdraw.

Pedro Fadul ran again for president as the candidate of the Beloved Fatherland Party (Partido Patria Querida, PPQ). Like the UNACE, the PPQ was initially a member of the APC.

Results were:
Fernando Lugo (APC) 42.4%
Blanca Ovelar (ANR) 31.8%
Lino Oviedo (UNACE) 22.7%
Pedro Fadul (PPQ) 2.4%
the three remaining candidates received under 0.5% of the vote

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

May I ask what program everyone uses to make these ?

[Sir John Johns]

Ugh, sorry for the delay, I have forgotten to answer this. Don't know for others but, personally, none of my maps are generated; I made them using three different software programs:

- QGIS to load the shapefile of the administrative divisions of the country I want to map and to export it as a png file
- paint.NET (which has much more functions than Paint) to trace the outline of the map with the help of the layer tool; this generally takes me a lot of time but this is the only way I know to obtain a clean map without rogue pixels. I don’t do it for my Paraguayan maps but, using once again the layer tool, I can also thicken the first-level administrative divisions to make them much more visible.
- Finally, I use Paint to color the blank map made with paint.NET as it is the easiest software to use for such a simple task. I however again use paint.NET to write the title and the key of my maps and to color places where there is a tie between two or more parties/candidates.