Orsi on top as ruling coalition loses control of congress
Thank you for reading LatinNews' chosen article from the Latin American Weekly Report - 31 October 2024
Uruguay’s ruling multi-colour coalition suffered a setback in presidential and congressional elections on 27 October. The presidential elections are in the balance and will require a second round on 24 November, but Yamandú Orsi, of the left-wing opposition coalition Frente Amplio (FA), won the most votes and the FA secured a wafer-thin majority in the senate, while the ruling coalition also lost control of the lower chamber of congress. The eventual victor will not be saddled with a heavy fiscal burden from the outset as a costly pension reform failed to win sufficient voter backing in a concurrent referendum.
Orsi won 43.9% of the vote in the first round, in line with the findings of electoral surveys since the turn of the year. álvaro Delgado, the candidate of the centre-right Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos), won 26.7% of the vote, slightly up on recent surveys. Andrés Ojeda finished third for the right-of-centre Partido Colorado (PC, Colorados), with 16% of the vote.
In absolute terms, Orsi won 1.057m votes, Delgado 644,000, and Ojeda 386,000. The FA won in 12 of the country’s 19 departments, up from eight in the first round in 2019, while the Blancos won in six and the Colorados won most votes in their stronghold in the border department of Rivera as normal (see map below).
The biggest change on five years ago was the performance of Guido Manini Ríos, the former army commander whose brand of right-wing populism saw him shoot to prominence before the 2019 elections. Manini Ríos won just 2.45% of the vote for his party Cabildo Abierto (CA), way down on the 10.9% he obtained for the CA in 2019, which was the strongest showing by a candidate not standing for one of the three traditional parties in Uruguay’s history. Manini Ríos did not even manage to finish fourth, with Gustavo Salle of the anti-establishment Identidad Soberana (IS) finishing slightly ahead of him on 2.69%. Pablo Mieres of the centrist Partido Independiente (PI), came just behind Manini Ríos on 1.71%.
Orsi improved on the showing of the FA’s presidential candidate Daniel Martínez in 2019, who won 39.2% of the vote, while Delgado fell short of Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou’s haul of 28.6%. The support of the PC, CA, and PI helped lift Lacalle Pou clear of Martínez in the second round in 2019 but not by anywhere near as much as it would have done if the backing for those parties’ candidates had transferred en masse to him. This underlines the scale of the challenge confronting Delgado, who will need to win over almost all of the voters who backed Ojeda, Manini Ríos, and Mieres if he is to prevail in the run-off.
Delgado set about trying to do this during his response to the results addressing supporters in Montevideo, accompanied by his coalition partners, when he pointedly set aside his party affiliation and promised to govern exclusively on behalf of the coalition. But there were some glum faces on stage. Compounding Delgado’s problems is that he could struggle to convince his coalition partners, let alone voters, that he will be in a position to advance his legislative agenda if he wins the run-off. After the first round in 2019, it was clear that Lacalle Pou would command a majority in both chambers of congress if he won the run-off. Delgado will lack a majority in either.
Pending final results, the FA has won a narrow majority in the 30-seat senate, with 16 seats, up by three on its current representation, while the PN took nine seats and the PC five, giving the multi-colour coalition 14 in total. The CA lost all three of its senate seats.
In the 99-seat lower chamber of congress, the multi-colour coalition won 49 seats in total, with the PN winning 29 and the PC 17, while the CA lost nine seats to finish with just two. Meanwhile, the FA won a total of 48 seats. This leaves an unprecedented situation in Uruguay, where whoever forms the next government will be just short of a majority. The anti-system IS managed to win two seats, giving it an outsized influence on the outcome of future legislative initiatives in the lower chamber.
Orsi will try and sell the FA’s majority in the incoming senate, however, to win over swing voters in the interests of governability. Even though Orsi would be hampered by the FA’s lack of a majority in the lower chamber, Delgado would be in a more complicated situation, having no choice but to negotiate with the FA in the senate.
Both candidates will be relieved that the referendum proposal made by the umbrella trade union Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores-Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (PIT-CNT), radically shaking up the pension system at great cost to the state, failed to muster the necessary 50% of the vote to be approved. It was backed by 38.8% of voters. A second referendum on a proposal to lift the ban on night-time residential searches by police also fell short of the 50% threshold, attracting 39.4% of the vote.
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