Less than two weeks before the election on February 2, Costa Rica remains undecided on who its new president will be, and it is likely headed for the second runoff election in its history. La Nación released the results of the latest national poll last Thursday — conducted by UNIMER — and the results put the leading three candidates in a virtual tie.
José María Villalta of the Broad Front (FA), Johnny Araya of National Liberation (PLN), and Otto Guevara of the Libertarian Movement (PML) are all fighting to be Costa Rica’s next president. The poll put Villalta slightly in front, with 22.2 percent, followed by Araya and Guevara, with 20.3 and 20.2 percent, respectively. With a 2.2 percent margin for error in the survey, the results put the three candidates in an essential dead heat.
If no candidate receives 40 percent of the vote on election day, the top two candidates will proceed to a runoff election — or second round — and square off for the presidency. The last time Costa Rica had a runoff election was in 2002, when Abel Pacheco of the Social Christian Unity Party beat the PLN’s Ronaldo Araya.
Source: The Tico Times.