Next Sunday, November 24, Uruguay will hold the second ballot of its presidential elections. This new appointment with the ballot boxes will put face to face the two political forces that underpin the country’s democratic stability: the center-right governing coalition, currently in power, and the center-left Broad Front.
Results of the first round
In the first ballot, the Broad Front was the most voted force with 43.9%. A result that exceeded the one obtained in 2019 in the same instance (39%), but far from the expectations of its militancy and referents. However, an unexpected result was that the Broad Front secured control of the Senate by obtaining sixteen seats out of thirty. Some interpreted this as a clear sign of its chances of winning in the runoff, although they forgot the corresponding empirical support.
For their part, the parties that make up the ruling center-right coalition, estimating that it was very unlikely that the Broad Front would obtain an absolute majority of the votes, approaching the first ballot as a sort of primary of the bloc. The “internal” was to shed light on which of its presidential pre-candidates had the greatest electoral support and also to update the state of the correlation of internal forces in the group. The results ratified Álvaro Delgado as presidential candidate and the National Party (26.7%) as the guiding axis of the ruling coalition, which together obtained a higher vote (47.6%) than that of the Broad Front.
Positive presidential popularity and internal cohesion
Comparative experience shows that, in Latin America, the positive or negative popularity of the incumbent president tends to be associated with the electoral result of the ruling party even in the second ballot of elections. Certainly, it does not do so in the same way. While the negative approval of the executive strongly predicts the defeat of the ruling party and alternation in power, the positive popularity of the president announces the continuity of the ruling party in power, but in a looser way.
The reason for the difference lies in the fact that, although the satisfactory perception of the incumbent president’s performance among the citizenry supports and boosts the possibilities of the ruling party’s presidential candidate, it only does so under the condition that the governing party or coalition faces the electoral campaign without being affected by an open or hidden internal division. That is why those who have pointed out that the chances of the republican coalition to retain power depend on the way in which they manage the differences and expectations of the parties that make up the coalition in this decisive phase are right.
The precedent
The Republican coalition had a recent experience in this regard. On the way to the second round of the 2019 presidential elections, when it had just been constituted as an electoral coalition, but had in its favor that Uruguayan citizens in general notoriously disapproved the administration of the then president Tabaré Vazquez, the Republican coalition, due to internal problems, suffered an important leak of votes that led it to obtain an extremely close victory that spoiled their celebration.
The positive popularity of President Luis Lacalle Pou, the survival of the government coalition throughout a complicated mandate and especially the opportunity to show some learning about internal conflict management in the midst of electoral campaigns could be providing clues about what will happen in the last week of November in the South American country.
The transfer of popularity in the second ballot of elections
In Uruguay, the Broad Front has twice competed in runoff elections with the positive approval of its presidents: Tabaré Vazquez (56%) in his first term and José Mujica (50%), respectively. In both cases, the presidential candidate of the center-left formation ended up winning hands down. On average, in both elections, the transfer of positive presidential popularity reached 105%. However, these outstanding levels of transfer could be conditioned by the degree of internal cohesion reached by the Broad Front Amplio, undoubtedly superior to those of the coalition of right-wing parties that has barely been existing for five years.
On the other hand, in the region, when the presidents have arrived at the electoral campaign with a positive evaluation, the governing party or coalition does not present a problem of internal cohesion and the candidacy of the ruling party has not fallen on the incumbent president himself seeking his successive reelection, the rate of transfer of positive popularity has been almost 102%. However, the number of cases that support this rate is also relatively small and the difference between the cases with lower and higher transfer unfortunately reflects a significant variation.
The data provided does not give a conclusive result as to which political force will finally obtain the preferences of the electorate, but instead provide an approximate range of the potential vote flow that could be harvested by the ruling party in the second round.
Recently, several comparative research have increased the knowledge about trends in the outcome of presidential elections in the democracies of the region. Based on this knowledge, what would really be a surprise in the second ballot of Uruguay’s presidential elections in 2024 would not be precisely the victory of the ruling party, but its defeat. This result, from a strictly comparative perspective, would even justify its definition as an emblematic case study.
*Translated by Janaína Ruviaro da Silva from the original in Spanish.
Autor
Profesor e investigador de la Universidad de Guadalajara (México). Doctor en Ciencia Política de la misma universidad. Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, Nivel 1.
