Yamandú Orsi and Álvaro Delgado will compete in the presidential runoff of Uruguay.
Orsi won the first electoral round this Sunday with 43.7% of the votes for the left-wing Frente Amplio coalition, while Delgado followed him with 26.9% for the ruling National Party, according to the partial results of the Electoral Court when he had already been scrutinized more of 95% of the votes.
Experts consider the result of the second round between the two uncertain.
Although Orsi and Delgado represent the two large blocs that divide Uruguayan voters, in terms of public policies this is “a confrontation between two projects that have more in common than differences,” political scientist Adolfo Garcé tells BBC Mundo. , professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic, in Montevideo.
“If many democracies in the world are characterized by polarized political competition and notable ideological contrasts, with leftists very leftist and rightists very rightist, the election in Uruguay between Orsi and Delgado is a runoff between two very centrist proposals,” says the expert. .
So, what does the outcome of this unique duel depend on?
What they share
Orsi was born 57 years ago and Delgado 55. They both have Italian and Canarian ancestry on their paternal or maternal side.
Both discovered their taste for politics after leaving the Uruguayan military dictatorship. (1973-1985), but they completed tertiary studies to work in other professions.
The leftist graduated as a History teacher, an activity he carried out in public secondary schools in the interior of Uruguay until 2005, when he became general secretary of the Municipality of Canelones, the most populated Uruguayan department after Montevideo.
From 2015 until March of this year (with a re-election in 2019) he was mayor of the same department, which borders the capital and in which he spent the first five years of his life in a rural area, before his parents moved to the city of Canelones to work and live in a warehouse.
Delgado, in turn, graduated as a veterinarian following his passion for rural life, completed a postgraduate degree in agroindustrial management and worked as a rural producer and certifier of fields and meat processing plants.
Later, the current official candidate also turned to professional politics, he was a government labor inspector, deputy (2005-2015), senator (2015-2020) and secretary of the presidency of the current president Luis Lacalle Pou until last December.
Yes ok Both have as political godfathers party leaders of marked and popular character, such as former President Mujica and Lacalle Pou, respectively.they have less charisma and share a style that prioritizes dialogue and the search for consensus over confrontation with adversaries.
The two claim this way of doing politics and have long maintained a direct communication channel where, according to Orsi, they can say “anything” to each other because they trust each other.
Their government proposals also have similarities.
For example, they point out as a priority the fight against child poverty—which affects 20% of children under 6 years of age, double that of the general population—with actions such as the universalization of initial education or the increase in public schools. full time.
None proposes a radical change for this country of 3.4 million inhabitants, but rather gradual changes that safeguard its traditional stability.
“The agreed transitions, in stages, have been the support of our democracy,” sociologist Mariana Pomiés, director of the local consulting firm Cifra, explains to BBC Mundo.
“All the candidates who made very drastic proposals here lost and when they ran again they had to moderate their own proposals,” he says.
Orsi achieved high approval ratings as mayor of Canelones, while Delgado was praised for his performance during the covid pandemic.
But the moderate and even affable style of both will have a special test in this second electoral round.
What separates them
As usually happens in runoff elections, The key to the election in Uruguay will be held by those who voted for other candidates who were left out of the final duel.
The third most voted, with 16.1%, was Andrés Ojeda, candidate of the Colorado Party, a traditional political force that has been part of the Lacalle Pou government.
For this reason, it is likely that the majority of Colorado voters will now opt for Delgado, as will those of the Independent Party (1.7%) and Cabildo Abierto (2.4%) who also participated in the ruling “multicolor coalition.”
But these parties “do not transfer their voters as a bloc to the candidate who faces the left,” warns Rosario Queirolo, a political scientist and professor in the social sciences department at the Catholic University in Montevideo.
In fact, the Frente Amplio, which governed Uruguay from 2005 to 2020, added several percentage points between the first and second rounds in the last three presidential elections, so an even finish is anticipated.
“There are a few who end up defining the end, the undecided. And in the runoff it is difficult to say what is going to decide these people”Queirolo, an expert in electoral behavior, tells BBC Mundo.
What those who voted blankly on Sunday (2.6%) or for Sovereign Identity, a new party critical of what it defines as the Uruguayan “political caste” that obtained 2.8% of the votes, could also be key.
At the legislative level, the Frente Amplio would have a majority in the next Senate, with 16 members out of 30. As of Monday morning, the complete integration of the Chamber of Deputies still had to be defined based on the scrutiny.
Queirolo points out that a main difference between the left and the center-right in Uruguay is how they think about reducing inequality: while the former tend to put more emphasis on redistributive policies, the latter bet more on economic expansion to reduce poverty.
With GDP growing at moderate rates (3.5% expected for this year), economic issues such as Unemployment and inflation are among the main concerns of Uruguayansaccording to surveys.
But what most worries voters and motivates crossed criticism between the ruling party and the opposition is public insecurity, with violent crimes linked to drug trafficking unknown until recently in the country and 10.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, almost double that in 2005.
Orsi has made “honesty” a campaign slogan after several scandals in the Lacalle Pou government that caused ministers to resign, while Delgado challenged his rival to call the Venezuelan government a “dictatorship,” something the leftist finally did. in the campaign.
Unlike what happened before the first round, For the runoff there will be a mandatory debate between the two candidates that can affect the inclination of voters and perhaps a priori favors Delgado due to his experience as a parliamentarian and solvency in national government issues, Garcé points out.
But he warns that the commonalities between the two electoral options also pose risks.
“The ideal of competition in democracy is that there is no polarization, but also no confusion,” he maintains.
“When government and opposition converge too much, the meaning of democracy is lost: basically, if everyone offers us more or less the same thing, we stop being able to choose. And that is dramatic.”
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