2014 Election Blog: Costa Rica's One-Man Presidential Runoff
Ahead of the April 6 vote, only a single candidate remains in the running after the other one quit his campaign.
On April 6, Costa Ricans vote in a runoff to pick a president, even though only one candidate has been left standing.
During the first-round vote on February 2, Luis Guillermo Solís of the Citizens’ Action Party (PAC) came in first with 30.98 percent, despite the fact that he’d been polling fourth. The governing National Liberation Party (PLN)’s Johnny Araya came in second with 29.57 percent. Abstention outpaced the portion of the vote that each candidate earned, reaching nearly 32 percent. Because no candidate reached the required 40 percent, a runoff vote was set.
But on March 5, Araya announced that he would stop campaigning in the face of disappointing poll numbers. It was the first time in Costa Rican history that a candidate has dropped out of a presidential runoff. Legally, Araya cannot withdraw altogether from the race, and his name will appear on the ballot on Sunday. Solís must receive a simple majority of votes in order to win the second round.
Campaigning officially ended on March 30, as Solís called for 1 million votes to ensure he has a mandate at the end of the one-horse race. The PAC candidate is a former professor who has never held elected office, and ran on a platform of transparency and anti-corruption. Last week, PLN party leaders challenged PAC to a debate, but the PAC rejected the idea, saying there would be a time crunch due to the fact that April 2 marks the last day for debates.
Even though he stopped campaigning, Araya encouraged Costa Ricans to turn out to the polls.