MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayan ruling coalition ahead by one point, say latest opinion polls

Presidential hopeful Mujica seems to be slowly recovering lost ground

The Uruguayan ruling coalition has a vote intention of 45%, one point ahead of the opposition for the coming October 25th presidential election, according to the latest public opinion poll released Monday evening.

The Cifra pollster has the main opposition National Party with 32% vote intention, down several points from the previous reading a month ago; the Partido Colorado, 10%, Independents, 2% and 11% remain undecided.

However, the poll which was done between August 29th and September first has a plus/minus 3.5 percentage points margin.

Eduardo Gonzalez from Cifra said that the main reading of the latest opinion poll shows the ruling coalition again with the initiative after weeks of eroding support, while the National party seems to have lost the steam which it had been accumulating for the last several months.

The ruling coalition candidate is former guerrilla leader and Agriculture minister Jose Mujica and his main rival former president (1990/1995) Luis Alberto Lacalle. Mujica is defined as a populist, although orthodox in his economics approach, while Lacalle is described as a liberal conservative.

“In these last weeks of campaign is when the electorate really sits down to think who they would like to have as Uruguayan president for the next five years”, said Gonzalez, adding that “since Mujica and Lacalle have, according to the electorate, favourable and negative points, the final-final decision will be extremely tight”.

If this last opinion poll picture repeats itself on the last Sunday of October, the ruling coalition Broad Front would just manage a very thin parliament majority and Mr. Lacalle would be competing with Mujica for the presidency in the November run off.

The latest Cifra poll also discerns between the vote intention in Montevideo, the capital, where almost half the country’s population lives and has been for the last twenty years a stronghold of the ruling Broad Front, and the rest of the country.

In Montevideo vote intention is 52%, the National Party 26%, the Colorado Party 9%, Independents, 2% and Undecided 10%. This comes as rather a surprise because the ruling coalition in the capital historically has had a solid 55%.

In the rest of the country, 18 of the 19 provinces, the Broad Front according to Cifra has 36% vote intention, the National Party 36%, Colorado party 11% and Independents, 2%. Moreover Cifra anticipates that the ruling coalition, according to this latest reading, will have a better showing than in October 2004, helping to compensate the erosion in Montevideo.

Cifra’s latest release confirms the tendency of several public opinion polls released in the last ten days: the Broad Front bouncing back and the National party suffering slight, steady erosion in vote intention.

In October 2004 the ruling coalition with President Tabare Vazquez won the election with 50.9% of the vote, ensuring a clear majority in the Legislative and avoiding a run off in November.