Uruguay’s once-dull election has become a dead heat in the presidential runoff

Uruguayans went to the polls Sunday for a second round of voting to choose their next president, with the conservative governing party and the left-leaning coalition locked in a close runoff after failing to win an outright majority in last month’s vote.

Uruguayans went to the polls Sunday for a second round of voting to choose their next president, with the conservative governing party and the left-leaning coalition locked in a close runoff after failing to win an outright majority in last month’s vote. The staid election has turned into a hard-fought race between Álvaro Delgado, the incumbent party’s candidate, and Yamandú Orsi from the Broad Front, a coalition of leftist and center-left parties that governed for 15 years until the 2019 victory of center-right President Luis Lacalle Pou. The Broad Front oversaw the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and the sale of marijuana in the small South American nation of 3.4 million people. Orsi’s Broad Front took 44% of the vote while Delgado’s National Party won 27% in the first round of voting Oct. 27. But the other conservative parties that make up the government coalition – in particular, the Colorado Party – notched 20% of the vote collectively, enough to give Delgado an edge over his challenger this time around. Congress ended up evenly split in the October vote. Most polls have shown a virtual tie between Delgado and Orsi, with nearly 10% of Uruguayan voters undecided even at this late stage. Analysts say the candidates’ lackluster campaigns and broad consensus on key issues have generated extraordinary indecision and apathy in an election dominated by discussions about social spending and concerns over growing income inequality but largely free of the anti-establishment rage that has vaulted populist outsiders to power elsewhere.