MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Voters in the small South American nation of Uruguay headed to the polls to choose a new president Sunday in a race between two moderates that defies regional trends of bitter division and democratic erosion.
The contest between Uruguay’s incumbent conservative coalition and its challenger, a center-left alliance, got underway with some 2.7 million eligible voters also casting ballots for Parliament and a contentious referendum on overhauling the social security system.
The pension vote — which would expand the fiscal deficit in one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries — has consumed more media attention in recent weeks than other top campaign issues, such as child poverty, education and security.
With the candidates in broad agreement over many issues, no one expects the outcome of the presidential vote to herald drastic change in this nation of 3.4 million people, long considered a model democracy and bastion of stability in the region.
“In a way, Uruguay has been boring, but boring in this sense is very good,” said Juan Cruz Díaz, a political analyst who runs the Cefeidas consultancy group in Buenos Aires. “We’ve seen so many dramatic changes in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and suddenly we face elections in Uruguay in which there is a general consensus, there’s stability.”
While in neighboring Brazil and Argentina, voters recently vented their rage at the status quo, Uruguay’s electorate remains largely satisfied with the government’s business-friendly policies and the economy’s steady growth. The current center-right president, Luis Lacalle Pou, enjoys a 50 percent approval rating.
The presidential campaigns have played out without the vitriol or personal attacks seen elsewhere, such as the United States, Argentina and Brazil.
As constitutional term limits bar Lacalle Pou from running for a second consecutive term, the governing party’s candidate is Álvaro Delgado, 55, a congressman and Lacalle Pou’s former chief of staff, who started his career as a veterinarian.
“This government leaves us with a very solid first level to continue building the future,” Delgado said during his closing campaign rally.
His main challenger is Yamandú Orsi, 57, a center-left former mayor and history teacher with humble roots from the Frente Amplio (or Broad Front) coalition, which governed for 15 years before Lacalle Pou’s 2019 victory.
From 2005 to 2020, Frente Amplio oversaw progressive laws, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage. Uruguay became the first country to legalize cannabis for recreational use and developed one of the world’s greenest grids, powered by 98 percent renewable energy.
The latest polls show Orsi in a comfortable lead at 44 percent, but not winning outright, which would send the country to a runoff on Nov. 24.
Orsi has benefited from the support of popular former President José “Pepe” Mujica, the eccentric former guerrilla who helped spearhead Uruguay’s transformation into the continent’s most socially liberal country during his 2010-2015 presidency.
Now 89, Mujica is battling esophageal cancer, but he managed to cast his ballot in Montevideo, the capital, on Sunday. Arriving to vote in a wheelchair, he was quickly swarmed by reporters.
“We need to support democracy, not because it is perfect, but because humans have not yet invented anything better,” he told journalists after exiting the polling station.
Like Mujica, who lives in a modest farmhouse on the outskirts of Montevideo, Orsi says he wouldn’t live in the presidential palace if elected.
In a distant third is Andrés Ojeda, 40, a muscular and media-savvy lawyer who has tried to energize apathetic young voters with splashy campaign videos showing him lifting weights at the gym and describing himself as a classic Capricorn.
“I want to be the candidate who inspires and enthralls people,” he said at his campaign event Thursday.
