Bolivia elections - 2019-2020 - Arce Victory

[Lord Halifax]

Why didn't Morales appoint officers loyal to him to the top jobs in the military and police? Are there no leftists in the security services?

[Lord Halifax]

Probable MAS candidates:

Andrónico Rodríguez, coca-leaf trade unionist

Adriana Salvatierra, provisional president for a couple of hours and former senator (she resigned to avoid being president during the hardest moment of the resignation/coup protests)

David Choquehuanca (trade unionist, Minister for International Relations 2006-2007, since then General Secretary of the ALBA [the Venezuela-led anti NAFTA/FTAA project])-Luis Arce (Economy Minister 2006-2017)

Has Arce agreed to be Choquehuanca's running mate? Or is he a fourth potential candidate.

David Choquehuanca is 58, Arce is 56 and Salvatierra & Rodríguez are both "kids" around 30. Do you think MAS will prefer a young candidate or someone from Morales' generation?

[Lord Halifax]

The estimation of valid votes is the following:

Arce 40.3%, Mesa 26.2%, Camacho 14 4%, Añez 10 6%, Chi Hyun Chung 4.4%, Quiroga 2.8%

Luis Arce and Carlos Mesa would qualify for a second round

There wouldn't be a second round on those numbers since Arce is above 40% and more than 10 points ahead of Mesa.

[Lord Halifax]

Seeing lots of anger at Camacho for "splitting the vote" and being a supposed MAS stooge on right-wing Bolivian twitter today. Not really sure why this is a prevalent belief since it looks like Arce got over 50% but it is out there.

Would have been a valid complaint if Arce was at 46% and Mesa got 34% and Arce won due to the >10% difference but with the expected MAS majority it doesn't make sense to me.

You always need a scapegoat when you lose big.

[Lord Halifax]

Uhhhh. The % of precincts counted had reached 99.96% last night, but this morning it's been going down (99.86 a few hours ago, 99.79 now). Any clue what's going on with that?

Now 99.27%. Anyone know what's going on?

If I had to guess, they’re trying to ensure that MAS won’t have a senate supermajority

I doubt it. It's 99.29% now and if you compare with the 99.96% count MAS has gained 0.1%, CC has gained 0.09%, Creemos has lost 0.19% and Chung's National Action Party of Bolivia has gained 0.01%.

[Lord Halifax]

Uhhhh. The % of precincts counted had reached 99.96% last night, but this morning it's been going down (99.86 a few hours ago, 99.79 now). Any clue what's going on with that?

Now 99.27%. Anyone know what's going on?

If I had to guess, they’re trying to ensure that MAS won’t have a senate supermajority

I doubt it. It's 99.29% now and if you compare with the 99.96% count MAS has gained 0.1%, CC has gained 0.09%, Creemos has lost 0.19% and Chung's National Action Party of Bolivia has gained 0.01%.

Continuing to fall, now down under 99%. But yeah, it seems that the precincts affected by this are more right-leaning ones, so it doesn't sound like Arce's lead is at risk (unless the right-wingers are suddenly "finding" tons of new ballots, but that seems unlikely at this point).

Still would love to hear from someone familiar with the counting process if they have an idea what's going on.

Looks like they're just correcting minor errors in some actas. They're back at 99.82% and the difference to the original 99.96% count is now MAS +0.03%, CC +0.02%, Creemos -0.05% and PAN +0.01%. The 88.42% turnout rate hasn't been adjusted so the total number of votes should be nearly identical.