MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Independent pollster forecasts opposition hopeful as next Uruguayan president

According to pollster MPC, the next Uruguayan president, Luis Alberto Lacalle

“Unless we face an abrupt and overwhelming change in the vote tendency of the majority of Uruguayans, the next president of the country will be the opposition National Party candidate, Luis Alberto Lacalle”, according to independent pollster MPC.

The MPC public opinion poll shows the National Party with a vote intention of 35% followed by the ruling coalition Broad Front with 34%, the junior opposition party Colorado with 14% and the Independents, 2%. Annulled or blank vote registers a 3% intention while 11.3% of Uruguayan voters remain undecided on their vote.

The latest opinion poll was finished Sunday August 23 and covered Uruguay’s 19 provinces or counties (Uruguay is the smallest country and least populated in South America). It confirms the tendencies of a previous poll from the beginning of the month when only ten counties were polled.

“With these percentages a run off is unavoidable” said MPC in its report.

The Uruguayan electorate will vote on the last Sunday of next October for a new Parliament (99 Deputies and 30 Senators) plus a presidential ticket with a Vice-president who acts as president of the Senate and the General Assembly.

However for the Executive post a 50% plus one vote majority is needed, if not the two leading candidates will meet again at a run off the last Sunday of November.

The poll identified as the MPC “First post-primaries research” interviewed a total of 9.210 members of the electorate with an average of 485 in each county.

“The National Party is ahead in 17 of Uruguay’s 19 counties and the National party candidate is leading the ruling coalition candidate Jose Mujica by at least nine points for the run-off next November”.

“The Broad Front is in the fight for the only reason that it has a majority in the two counties which make up 55% of the Uruguayan electorate. They are the capital Montevideo and the immediate half metropolitan/half farm county of Canelones. However in Canelones and in spite of a relative parity, Lacalle seems to be edging over Mujica, particularly in the run off”, says MPC.

MPC is a relatively new pollster in Uruguayan politics and has been quite accurate in recent elections, primaries and forecasting tendencies. It has also marked a difference with the more traditional pollsters, whose reliability is not questioned but every now and then come across with extravagant, later unconfirmed, forecasts.

The so called traditional pollsters hold interesting contracts with political parties, different government offices and television stations. All of them confirm the November run-off tendency because of the tight race; however they have the ruling coalition ahead with a percentage in the low forties and the National Party in the high thirties.

Independent MPC is the only pollster to have consistently shown vote intention for the National Party in a draw or just ahead of the ruling coalition’s vote intention.