Bolivia’s Elections on Sunday – What to Watch For

Many eyes, both in Bolivia and around the world, will be focused on tomorrow’s important national elections. However, what the vote means and how it will play out over the next few weeks requires a bit of local understanding and analysis. Remember (as so few foreign reporters seem to): Winning first place does not mean you are elected President. Not unless you win 51% of the vote, which no one seems likely to. The winner will be selected, from among the top two finishers, by Congress in January

Here’s what The Democracy Center will be watching for and what our readers might want to watch for as well:

The Results of the Popular Vote

This is obvious, but there are nuances to look for. Polling results have been pretty much the same since the start of the campaign: Evo Morales in first with somewhere between 34-37% of the vote, Tuto Quiroga in second with 25-27%, Samuel Doria Medina coming in third at around 15% and the rest trailing below 10%. There may be some late switching from Medina to the marginal MNR candidate. In other words, as far as the polling goes, no late surge for either of the top two.

However, the actual voting could yield results very different.

Clearly if any candidate has popular momentum at the end it is Morales. Witness the fact that his end-of campaign victory rally in Cochabamba was held in a soccer stadium while Quiroga’s was held in a small city plaza. Does a last minute surge or a countryside vote not reflected in the polls push Morales and MAS past 40%? From the conversations I have had with people here, 40% seems like the psychological barrier in which a Morales presidency moves from being a negotiable possibility to a something almost undeniable.

Conversely, if Morales does worse than the polls suggest, less than 30% for example, and Quiroga does better, a Quiroga presidency in alliance with other parties seems much more likely.

The strongest likelihood is a vote result similar to the current polling, which leads us to the next thing to watch.

How the Popular Vote Translates into Congressional Numbers

As we, and many other Bolivia watchers, have pointed out, the popular vote does not translate directly into the way in which seats will be apportioned in Congress. Senators are elected by department and in many of the smaller ones Quiroga is likely to win. That and a number of other complicated congressional vote arrangements means, in all likelihood, that Quiroga will end up with a higher proportion of the vote in the Congress than he will in the popular vote, though still a wide gap shy of 51%

The “Smoke Signals” from Morales, Quiroga, Dora Medina, and the US

Four key players will be looking at Sunday’s results and making some hard choices. How they are thinking about those choices is likely to be reflected in their public comments in the first few days. These include:

Evo Morales: Is he going to push hard for the presidency? As we have noted on the Blog for weeks, Morales and MAS will take a look at their vote results and make a choice whether they want to make the political deals required to win 51% in Congress or whether they think they are better off as the opposition to a Quiroga government focusing pressure on a quick convening of a constituent assembly to rewrite Bolivia’s constitution. Watch Morales’ post election comments. If he and MAS use wording like “inevitable” to describe his election to the Presidency, that means MAS is deciding to bring all the pressure and deal making it can to bear on making that happen.

Tuto Quiroga: Does he want to be President after a weak second place finish? Similarly, Quiroga will need to decide whether he wants to try and wheel and deal a second place finish, potentially a weak one, into a vote in the Congress to make him president. More than a few here have questioned whether he has the fire in the belly to do that and he himself has made numerous comments that he will not seek the presidency if he does not finish first. Moving back to the US again with his family and making some money could look like a sweeter option than trying to govern a fractious nation on the basis of a quarter of the popular vote. Watch the nuances as well for how tough Quiroga sounds about winning the vote in the Congress.

Samuel Dora Medina: Does he sound like he is ready to dance with Morales or Quiroga? If both Morales and Quiroga choose to seriously contest the vote in the Congress, Doria Medina will likely be the kingmaker to either. His comments and the order in which he meets with his two rivals will also offer insight into both his intentions and the negotiations underway behind the scenes.

The US Government: Is Evo acceptable? I think that a good part of both Quiroga’s and Doria Medina’s decisions will be influenced by the moves of the US government. You can bet that by the end of the day Monday the Ambassador will have had telephone conversations if not meetings with both. Will the US decide to use its influence to do all it can to block a Morales presidency? Will it signal, in the case of a strong Morales finish, that it is ready to “work constructively with anyone the Bolivian people chose to elect?” Watch closely for what the US Embassy has to say. Watch also for whether the US statements come from Washington instead of La Paz. That would mean something, either way, even more serious.

The Blog and Comments Posted Here

The Democracy Center will be talking all weekend and all week with the various sources we have here and we’ll be writing as often as we need, to provide updated news and analysis. Among our readers and commenters are also many people with a deep understanding of Bolivian politics and wide contacts. We encourage you to post those views, as you always do, on this Blog so that it can become a key information source as events unfold.