![\"\"](\"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/L21-Banner-INGLES-1024x190.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nHolding elections that meet integrity standards is no minor matter at a time when the region is undergoing processes of democratic erosion. The quality of these elections determines whether alternation in power is possible, whether democracy can persist, resist, and remain resilient when facing multiple challenges such as political-criminal violence, citizen fatigue, institutional co-optation, affective polarization, and ideological radicalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ballot speaks: five regional patterns<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAn assessment of the 2025 elections reveals five patterns that transcend national borders and illustrate key features of today\u2019s regional political dynamics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First: protest voting has consolidated.<\/strong> From the overwhelming victory of the far right over the left in Chile on December 14\u2014when Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast won 58% of the vote\u2014to President Daniel Noboa\u2019s failed referendum in Ecuador, the dramatic collapse of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia, and the governing Libre party\u2019s third-place finish in Honduras, the message has been consistent: voters punish those in power, regardless of ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Bolivia, MAS suffered a dramatic defeat after nearly two decades of dominance. The party of Evo Morales and Luis Arce, which won 75 of 130 seats in 2020, was reduced to just two in the August elections. For the first time, Bolivia held a presidential runoff on October 19, where Rodrigo Paz of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) won with 54.5% of the vote. In Honduras, the ruling party\u2019s candidate, Rixi Moncada, placed third, while conservative candidate Nasry \u201cTito\u201d Asfura of the National Party became president-elect following a highly contentious race marked by external intervention, numerous episodes of political violence, and 24 days of uncertainty before results were finalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Noboa suffered a devastating defeat in the November 16 referendum: \u201cNo\u201d prevailed on all four questions, including rejecting the authorization of foreign military bases (60% voted NO) and rejecting the call for a Constituent Assembly (61% NO). This outcome surprised many, as it came just seven months after Noboa won the presidency with 55.6% of the vote. Interpretations are still developing, but it suggests that citizens are unwilling to grant \u201cblank checks\u201d to their leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second: pragmatism is replacing ideology.<\/strong> Paz\u2019s centrist message of \u201ccapitalism for all\u201d in Bolivia, Noboa\u2019s security-focused campaign in Ecuador, and the rejection of ruling parties across the region show that many Latin American voters in 2025 are moving beyond ideological alignment. Voters seem less interested in long-term transformative projects and more in immediate responses to pressing problems: insecurity, economic crises, and corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis trend has benefited conservative forces. In Chile, a far-right candidate\u2014openly nostalgic for Pinochet\u2014won for the first time, promising drastic public spending cuts, tough \u201claw and order\u201d policies, opposition to abortion and marriage equality, and aggressive measures against crime and irregular migration. Kast\u2019s victory adds to right-wing governments like Javier Milei in Argentina, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Santiago Pe\u00f1a in Paraguay, and Luis Abinader in the Dominican Republic. This new \u201cblue wave\u201d shapes the current political map, though with different tones and levels of radicalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third: party fragmentation, divided governments, and minority presidencies.<\/strong> Except in Ecuador, where polarization between corre\u00edsmo and anti-corre\u00edsmo shaped both the April presidential election and the November referendum, other countries experienced deep fragmentation. In Bolivia, seven competitive presidential candidacies contended in the first round. In Honduras, three candidates fiercely competed in one of the country\u2019s most tightly contested elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHigh fragmentation often produces minority presidents and divided governments. This year, Bolivia and Ecuador joined Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru, where presidents govern with weak congressional support. By contrast, two countries have extremely powerful presidents with unified governments: Mexico and El Salvador, where ruling parties hold supermajorities capable of passing constitutional reforms without negotiating with the opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fourth: the hollowing of the political center and the crisis of moderate parties and leaderships.<\/strong> As previously argued with Mar\u00eda Esperanza Casullo, \u201ccenter-and-something\u201d parties (center-left and center-right) have long struggled to attract votes from the middle. Moderate politics seems to lack electoral appeal in Latin America. This declining representative capacity of the political center has created a vacuum often filled by outsiders or new parties claiming to embody fresh demands and alternatives from the margins. This vacuum feeds polarization strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFifth: institutional credibility crisis.<\/strong> With the exception of Chile\u2014where results were announced two hours after polls closed and immediately accepted\u2014electoral processes in Honduras and Ecuador faced serious challenges from political actors who refused to recognize the results. In Ecuador, after the April runoff, Luisa Gonz\u00e1lez of the Citizens\u2019 Revolution questioned transparency. In Bolivia, accusations of irregularities persisted throughout the August elections. In Honduras, more than two weeks after the November 30 vote, the presidential result remained undefined.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTrust in electoral institutions\u2014the cornerstone of democracy\u2014shows troubling cracks that deepened throughout 2025. Many countries now face governance crises alongside fragmented systems, hate speech, interpersonal and institutional distrust, and extreme polarization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three lessons for the future<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThis electoral year leaves lessons that will shape regional politics in coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First: political-criminal violence conditions democracy.<\/strong> Several elections took place amid criminal violence. Honduras recorded six politically motivated homicides during the campaign, four targeting candidates from the ruling Libre party. The NGO Cristosal documented 67 political violence incidents between September 2024 and November 2025, including assassinations, attacks, threats, and harassment. Ecuador held its referendum under a State of Emergency due to \u201cinternal armed conflict,\u201d declared in response to escalating drug-related violence and loss of state control over prisons. Mexico continues to hold elections in violent contexts, particularly at the local level. The \u201cVoting Between Bullets\u201d project by Data C\u00edvica and M\u00e9xico Eval\u00faa has documented rising political-criminal violence since 2018, with 2024 being the most violent year yet, especially locally.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSecond: external influence is redefining electoral sovereignty.<\/strong> U.S. involvement in the Honduran presidential election, as well as in Argentina\u2019s legislative elections weeks earlier, raised alarms about political autonomy in the region. In Ecuador, Noboa actively sought to establish U.S. military bases, a proposal rejected by 60% of voters. This level of foreign intervention\u2014openly supporting candidates, conditioning economic aid, pressuring electoral decisions, or warning of retaliation\u2014sets a dangerous precedent that reshapes the regional political game. External actors become potential \u201cbalancers\u201d of competition, creating tilted playing fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThird: polarization can demobilize voters.<\/strong> Ecuador showed that even amid extreme polarization, voter mobilization is not guaranteed. The moderate vote, which could have tipped the balance in the referendum, simply vanished or dissolved between the two radical positions. This suggests polarization may demobilize sectors that feel unrepresented by either extreme, paradoxically weakening democratic participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDemocracies at risk<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nDespite difficulties, elections are still being held with reasonable levels of integrity. Power alternation occurred in several countries. Most losing candidates\u2014even reluctantly\u2014accepted results. This shows electoral institutions still retain some strength. However, democratic erosion comes not from the absence of elections, but from those elected through them. It arises from leaders who challenge democracy\u2019s pluralistic foundations. Today\u2019s central dispute is over what \u201ctrue democracy\u201d means: a system prioritizing rights and institutional checks, or one concentrating power in the name of the \u201cpopular will.\u201d This debate cuts across countries as different as Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2025, Latin American democracies faced multiple threats: low institutional trust, persistent violence, co-opted electoral authorities, vulnerability to external actors, and illiberal governments fostering polarization. Protest voting was one of the year\u2019s most visible patterns, but part of something broader: extreme electoral volatility, where citizens reject governments of any ideology in search of immediate solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The challenge for 2026\u2014when countries like Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil (municipal elections) head to the polls\u2014will be to safeguard electoral autonomy and professionalism, strengthen pluralism, depolarize public life, limit external interference, and continue reinforcing democratic institutions without yielding to narratives that promise order at the expense of hard-won rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a 2025 marked by punitive polls, fragmented systems, and democracies under pressure, Latin America confirmed that voting remains an instrument of change, but no longer a guarantee of stability or democratic strengthening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":54251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16844,16729,17157,16729,16844],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-54233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-democracia-en","8":"category-politica-en","9":"category-politia-en","12":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54233"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=54233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In Bolivia, MAS suffered a dramatic defeat after nearly two decades of dominance. The party of Evo Morales and Luis Arce, which won 75 of 130 seats in 2020, was reduced to just two in the August elections. For the first time, Bolivia held a presidential runoff on October 19, where Rodrigo Paz of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) won with 54.5% of the vote. In Honduras, the ruling party\u2019s candidate, Rixi Moncada, placed third, while conservative candidate Nasry \u201cTito\u201d Asfura of the National Party became president-elect following a highly contentious race marked by external intervention, numerous episodes of political violence, and 24 days of uncertainty before results were finalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Noboa suffered a devastating defeat in the November 16 referendum: \u201cNo\u201d prevailed on all four questions, including rejecting the authorization of foreign military bases (60% voted NO) and rejecting the call for a Constituent Assembly (61% NO). This outcome surprised many, as it came just seven months after Noboa won the presidency with 55.6% of the vote. Interpretations are still developing, but it suggests that citizens are unwilling to grant \u201cblank checks\u201d to their leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second: pragmatism is replacing ideology.<\/strong> Paz\u2019s centrist message of \u201ccapitalism for all\u201d in Bolivia, Noboa\u2019s security-focused campaign in Ecuador, and the rejection of ruling parties across the region show that many Latin American voters in 2025 are moving beyond ideological alignment. Voters seem less interested in long-term transformative projects and more in immediate responses to pressing problems: insecurity, economic crises, and corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This trend has benefited conservative forces. In Chile, a far-right candidate\u2014openly nostalgic for Pinochet\u2014won for the first time, promising drastic public spending cuts, tough \u201claw and order\u201d policies, opposition to abortion and marriage equality, and aggressive measures against crime and irregular migration. Kast\u2019s victory adds to right-wing governments like Javier Milei in Argentina, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Santiago Pe\u00f1a in Paraguay, and Luis Abinader in the Dominican Republic. This new \u201cblue wave\u201d shapes the current political map, though with different tones and levels of radicalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third: party fragmentation, divided governments, and minority presidencies.<\/strong> Except in Ecuador, where polarization between corre\u00edsmo and anti-corre\u00edsmo shaped both the April presidential election and the November referendum, other countries experienced deep fragmentation. In Bolivia, seven competitive presidential candidacies contended in the first round. In Honduras, three candidates fiercely competed in one of the country\u2019s most tightly contested elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n High fragmentation often produces minority presidents and divided governments. This year, Bolivia and Ecuador joined Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru, where presidents govern with weak congressional support. By contrast, two countries have extremely powerful presidents with unified governments: Mexico and El Salvador, where ruling parties hold supermajorities capable of passing constitutional reforms without negotiating with the opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fourth: the hollowing of the political center and the crisis of moderate parties and leaderships.<\/strong> As previously argued with Mar\u00eda Esperanza Casullo, \u201ccenter-and-something\u201d parties (center-left and center-right) have long struggled to attract votes from the middle. Moderate politics seems to lack electoral appeal in Latin America. This declining representative capacity of the political center has created a vacuum often filled by outsiders or new parties claiming to embody fresh demands and alternatives from the margins. This vacuum feeds polarization strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fifth: institutional credibility crisis.<\/strong> With the exception of Chile\u2014where results were announced two hours after polls closed and immediately accepted\u2014electoral processes in Honduras and Ecuador faced serious challenges from political actors who refused to recognize the results. In Ecuador, after the April runoff, Luisa Gonz\u00e1lez of the Citizens\u2019 Revolution questioned transparency. In Bolivia, accusations of irregularities persisted throughout the August elections. In Honduras, more than two weeks after the November 30 vote, the presidential result remained undefined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust in electoral institutions\u2014the cornerstone of democracy\u2014shows troubling cracks that deepened throughout 2025. Many countries now face governance crises alongside fragmented systems, hate speech, interpersonal and institutional distrust, and extreme polarization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This electoral year leaves lessons that will shape regional politics in coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First: political-criminal violence conditions democracy.<\/strong> Several elections took place amid criminal violence. Honduras recorded six politically motivated homicides during the campaign, four targeting candidates from the ruling Libre party. The NGO Cristosal documented 67 political violence incidents between September 2024 and November 2025, including assassinations, attacks, threats, and harassment. Ecuador held its referendum under a State of Emergency due to \u201cinternal armed conflict,\u201d declared in response to escalating drug-related violence and loss of state control over prisons. Mexico continues to hold elections in violent contexts, particularly at the local level. The \u201cVoting Between Bullets\u201d project by Data C\u00edvica and M\u00e9xico Eval\u00faa has documented rising political-criminal violence since 2018, with 2024 being the most violent year yet, especially locally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second: external influence is redefining electoral sovereignty.<\/strong> U.S. involvement in the Honduran presidential election, as well as in Argentina\u2019s legislative elections weeks earlier, raised alarms about political autonomy in the region. In Ecuador, Noboa actively sought to establish U.S. military bases, a proposal rejected by 60% of voters. This level of foreign intervention\u2014openly supporting candidates, conditioning economic aid, pressuring electoral decisions, or warning of retaliation\u2014sets a dangerous precedent that reshapes the regional political game. External actors become potential \u201cbalancers\u201d of competition, creating tilted playing fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third: polarization can demobilize voters.<\/strong> Ecuador showed that even amid extreme polarization, voter mobilization is not guaranteed. The moderate vote, which could have tipped the balance in the referendum, simply vanished or dissolved between the two radical positions. This suggests polarization may demobilize sectors that feel unrepresented by either extreme, paradoxically weakening democratic participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite difficulties, elections are still being held with reasonable levels of integrity. Power alternation occurred in several countries. Most losing candidates\u2014even reluctantly\u2014accepted results. This shows electoral institutions still retain some strength. However, democratic erosion comes not from the absence of elections, but from those elected through them. It arises from leaders who challenge democracy\u2019s pluralistic foundations. Today\u2019s central dispute is over what \u201ctrue democracy\u201d means: a system prioritizing rights and institutional checks, or one concentrating power in the name of the \u201cpopular will.\u201d This debate cuts across countries as different as Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2025, Latin American democracies faced multiple threats: low institutional trust, persistent violence, co-opted electoral authorities, vulnerability to external actors, and illiberal governments fostering polarization. Protest voting was one of the year\u2019s most visible patterns, but part of something broader: extreme electoral volatility, where citizens reject governments of any ideology in search of immediate solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The challenge for 2026\u2014when countries like Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil (municipal elections) head to the polls\u2014will be to safeguard electoral autonomy and professionalism, strengthen pluralism, depolarize public life, limit external interference, and continue reinforcing democratic institutions without yielding to narratives that promise order at the expense of hard-won rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a 2025 marked by punitive polls, fragmented systems, and democracies under pressure, Latin America confirmed that voting remains an instrument of change, but no longer a guarantee of stability or democratic strengthening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":54251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16844,16729,17157,16729,16844],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-54233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-democracia-en","8":"category-politica-en","9":"category-politia-en","12":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54233"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=54233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Three lessons for the future<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Democracies at risk<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n