One is a history teacher and candidate for the left of former president José “Pepe” Mujica. Another is a veterinarian and represents the current center-right government: Yamandú Orsi and Álvaro Delgado are contesting the presidential runoff in Uruguay this Sunday.
Orsi won the first electoral round in October with 44% of the votes for the leftist Frente Amplio coalition, while Delgado followed with 27% for the ruling National Party, according to the official count of the Electoral Court.
Experts consider the outcome of the second round between the two uncertain and voting intention surveys give Orsi a minimal advantage, which is within the margin of error.
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, professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the Republic, in Montevideo, tells BBC Mundo.
“If many democracies in the world are characterized by polarized political competition and notable ideological contrasts, with left-wing parties very left-wing and right-wing parties very right-wing, 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.the candidates 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.
The moderate and even affable style of both has had 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%, 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 opt for Delgado, as will those of Cabildo Abierto (2.5%) and the Independent Party (1.7%), which also make up the “republican coalition” in power.
The leaders of these parties in the government called to vote for Delgado and if they managed to add all their votes in the second round, they could defeat Orsi.
But those games “they don’t move like a block” his voters to the candidate who faces the left, warns Rosario Queirolo, political scientist and professor in the department of social sciences 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”says Queirolo, an expert in electoral behavior, to BBC Mundo.
What could also be key is what those who voted blank or annulled on Sunday (5% in total) or for Sovereign Identity, a new party critical of what it defines as the Uruguayan “political caste”, which obtained 2.7% of the votes, do.
At the legislative level, the Frente Amplio will have a majority in the next Senate, with 16 members out of 30. But no party or coalition will control the Chamber of Deputies, so the winner of the runoff will have to negotiate the approval of their projects.
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 worries voters the most and motivates cross criticism between the ruling party and the opposition is public insecuritywith violent crimes linked to drug trafficking unknown until recently in the country and a rate of 10.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, almost double that of 2005.
Orsi made “honesty” a slogan of his campaign after several scandals in the Lacalle Pou government that caused ministers to resign.
Delgado, for his part, challenged his rival to call the Venezuelan government a “dictatorship,” something the leftist finally did before the first round.
The only debate that both candidates held for the runoff passed without major surprises and received criticism for how tedious it was.
Garcé warns that the similarity between the two electoral options also poses 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.”
click here to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.
Subscribe here to our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday.
You can also follow us on YouTube, instagram, TikTok, x, Facebook and on our channel WhatsApp.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.
- Why it is said that the Uruguayan elections are the “most boring” of the year (and that can also be enviable)