Dominican Republic Elections: A New Mandate for the PLD
Dominican Republic Elections: A New Mandate for the PLD
Danilo Medina won the presidential election in the first round due to good campaigning and the legacy of one of his biggest supporters.
As the most credited polls predicted, Danilo Medina of the governing Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD) won a decisive victory on Sunday, May 20, in the first-round presidential election in the Dominican Republic. Medina and his running mate, First Lady Margarita Cedeño de Fernández, obtained 51.21 percent of the votes versus 46.95 percent for former President Hipólito Mejía of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD). This is the third consecutive presidential election won by the PLD; President Leonel Fernández was elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2008.
Medina won the election through victories in four of the five largest cities. In Santo Domingo, Medina finished ahead of Mejía by over 13 percentage points; in the Province of Santo Domingo, which surrounds the capital city, he had nearly an 11 percentage point margin of victory. Clearly the urban, middle-class vote was a key factor in the PLD win.
The PLD and PRD, with their allies, obtained 98.16 percent of the votes cast with the other four candidates splitting the remaining 1.83 percent of votes, which represents a degree of political polarization not seen in they country since the 1970s. The third-largest party, Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC), did not present a presidential candidate for the first time since 1966 due to internal divisions that linger after the death of its leader, Joaquín Balaguer, in 2002. The PRSC instead supported the PLD and Danilo Medina.
A number of factors helped Medina to win the presidency. Undoubtedly, key segments of the electorate, especially the middle and upper-middle classes in urban centers, saw Medina as continuing the economic policies of Leonel Fernández’ eight years in office. Currency stability, economic growth and infrastructure investment—all part of Fernández’ legacy—helped a campaign where the main theme was continuity for what is working and fixing any items that need attention.
Read the full article at www.AmericasQuarterly.org.
Flavio Darío Espinal is a former Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the Organization of American States and to the United States of America.
