Uruguay still doesn’t know who its new president is

The initial results announced Luis Lacalle Pou as the winner of the second presidential round in Uruguay. But a narrow margin of difference between the two candidates forced the Electoral Court to announce a counting of votes, so the results will have to wait a few more days.

The results showed 48.71% for Lacalle Pou and 47.51% for Daniel Martínez. The difference of less than 1.5%, representing 28,666 votes, prevented the 46-year-old candidate from becoming the new president of Uruguay. "Although official numbers indicate that the National Party candidate would have won the second round of the Frente Amplio, the difference is greater than the number of votes observed," RT said. The reason is that the difference in vote was lower than that of the “observed” votes (voters who vote in other places that do not apply), which for this occasion are around 35,000. In that case, the electoral authority must count the vote by vote to determine the results.

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Luis Lacalle Pou belongs to the National Party, center right, which for these elections is supported by the other parties and coalitions in the country, with the exception of the Clean Front. After the results of the first round, the two candidates who were losers joined Lacalle Pou in the quest to get the Clean Front out of power. The Clean Front coalition is the one that currently governs in Uruguay and its leftist ideology has remained at the head of the country for 15 years.

This narrow margin between the two candidates was surprising for the Uruguayan population, since the latest polls threw the right-wing candidate as a winner with a margin ranging from 5% to 8%.

While waiting for the results announced by the Electoral Court, projected for Thursday, November 28, the election day left a participation of 90% of the citizens qualified to vote, which speaks of the strength of the democratic system in the country.