Costa Rica: Uncertainty Grows Ahead of Second Round of Presidental Election

Fabricio Alvarado Munoz, an evangelical preacher and candidate from the National Restoration Party (PRN), and Carlos Alvarado Quesada, a former journalist and political scientist from the ruling centre-left Citizen Action Party (PAC), will face off in a tight presidential race on April 1 dominated by the debate on gender diversity.

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Alvarado Munoz, an ultra-conservative, secured 24.99 percent of the votes in the preliminary round of the election finishing just over three percent ahead of Alvarado Quesada, who was second in the poll with 21.63 percent. In the first round, neither of the candidates came close to the 40 percent of the votes needed to claim an outright victory. However, with the field of candidates narrowed to exclude Antonio Álvarez, of the National Liberation Party, who came third with 18.63 percent and Rodolfo Piza, of the Social Christian Unity Party, who was fourth with 15.99 percent, the race's dynamic has changed significantly. 

The most recent poll by the University of Costa Rica shows the candidates are in a virtual tie with Alvarado Munoz and Alvarado Quesada having captured 43 and 42 percent of the support of likely voters respectively. The one-point lead is within the poll’s margin of error and electoral polls have a patchy record in Costa Rica with most having misread the 2014 election.
 
“The absence of party identification leads to a couple of very unusual conditions: lots of voters who are undecided plus an unprecedented volatility in voter preferences,” according to Ronald Alfaro, a pollster at the University of Costa Rica.

Another poll due to be published Friday by Opol Consultores wasn't released due to threats but also suggested that Alvarado Munoz was ahead.

“We regret not being able to conclude our work. The integrity of our collaborators comes first. It is important to say that the work done reflected a minimum variation in comparison to the survey published last Friday where the candidate of the National Restoration Party, Fabricio Alvarado Munoz, had a 56% in the vote intention versus a 44% of Carlos Alvarado Quesada of the Citizens’ Action Party," stated the press release by Opol.

Alvarado Munoz won the support of the most conservative side of Costa Rican society after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) requested member countries to guarantee the rights of the LGBT community and allow for same-sex marriage.

The IACHR resolution stated that “the State must recognize and guarantee all rights regarding a family link between same-sex people, in accordance with what established in articles 11.2 and 17.1 of the Human Rights American Convention and the terms established in paragraphs 200 to 218.”

The resolution came after the Costa Rican government consulted the IACHR on the matter, but many in the Central American country were dissatisfied with the answer.

A day after the resolution was made public in January, Alvarado Munoz proposed pulling Costa Rica out from the IACHR to preserve sovereignty on matters relating to LGBT rights. His popularity promptly skyrocketed in the polls.

He has since denied that he's running on a religious platform, but has proposed reviewing sex education in schools, turning the National Women's Institute into the Ministry of the Family, repealing laws against LGBT discrimination and even defending evangelical churches' treatments to 'cure homosexuality.'

Alvarado Quesada, on the other hand, represents continuity of the current administration's policies although he is positioning himself as a young mind among an older generation with an eye on the future.

He studied literature and worked as a journalist to emulate Ernest Hemingway, one of his heroes, and used to be in progressive rock band Dramatica.

More than three million Costa Ricans are registered to vote to elect the president for the next four years. However, there was an abstention rate of 35.34 percent in the preliminary round. Results from the vote are expected late Sunday or early Monday, given the size of the electorate.