I’ve started this post many times. Once I begun by making a point about how my dad saw things. Once I decided to start with an example of how public opinion is turning again in favor of Rafael Ã?ngel Calderón and Miguel Ã?ngel RodrÃguez, both up until recently in prison and undergoing a corruption investigation. Several times I’ve just gone straight to the numbers. All those times I’ve erased everything, and started over again. While what happened at the election is a complex issue, with many little things bringing about this final outcome, there are clearly some primary factors:
- The grudge vote
- ¡Ya ganamos! / Salà a votar
- Being on the winning side
The grudge vote
There were two kinds of people in this election: those who were voting for Arias right of the bat, and those who would even have voted for me as their Dictator For Life if Arias was the single other choice.
The second crowd were there because Arias pissed people off – plain and simple. There are many reasons for this, the least of which are the cell phone telemarketing messages that his team left. When Arias first ran for office, 20 years ago, he was perceived as a young guy trying to make a difference inside the party. This time around the perception among many – even if they didn’t articulate exactly like this – is that he is just an rich, arrogant egomaniac who was just running for the hell of it, throwing money at the problem because he could. Some felt the Sala IV had been co-opted into allowing the re-election, and that angered them even if they didn’t understand the rationale behind it. Some were driven over the edge by the fact that he just refused to debate Ottón SolÃs, arguing that he was so far ahead that SolÃs’ request for a debate was nothing but a desperate measure (hell, even a friend’s father, who worked closely with Arias during his presidency, kept saying that he would vote for anyone but him and PUSC). Finally, some were flat out angered by the fact that he was so sure had already won, that they felt the urge to prove him wrong.
By no means I thought that the vote would be as tight as it was. I personally expected Arias to be just under 40% with Ottón close behind, with an abstention rate of around 40% (it was 35%). Just a week ago I told Jacqueline and Jorge that this would almost certainly spell a victory for SolÃs in the second round, because everyone would gang up against Arias and SolÃs would win solely based on the grudge vote. From the way things are looking, he may just sneak under the fence on the first round.
I guess people hated Arias even more than I thought.
On the other hand there were those people who were with Arias, and that would have voted for him even if Noriega came out and handed copies of campaign money receipts personally signed by Arias himself. Among those there were people like my father, who would go out to vote even if you blockaded his front door, but on many others I noticed a repeat of an old tendency.
¡Ya Ganamos!
A few days ago I noted Jacqueline wrote on her blog that for a guy who is certain to win, Oscar Arias sure is campaigning hard. I commented:
28 years ago Luis Alberto Monge ran against Rodrigo Carazo, who had a party that was considered a mongrel made out of outcasts from other parties. Nobody gave Carazo a chance, to the point that Monge’s slogan was “¡Ya ganamos!” (“We’ve already won!”).
Since they’d already won, nobody went out to vote. Monge lost the election.
Everyone in Liberación assumed Arias would win, and that he would do so by an overwhelming amount in the first round. Even my father, who is usually pretty objective in his analysis (he pointed out a similarly atmosphere of undue confidence in the last election, which Liberación lost), was dead certain there was no possible way that he would lose. The elections were not going to be even close and, as my dad said, there’s no way Ottón SolÃs will ever be president of Costa Rica.
And guess what? Many Liberacionistas didn’t go out and vote.
Now, we’re talking about my decidedly non-statistical approach of asking random friends who I knew were Liberación sympathizers. You won’t get an error margin from me. But it was clear that the PAC people were out campaigning, having voted early, as were those of us who had gone to vote for Mendezovia, Joeburgo or whatever else we fancied our null vote being. Liberación people were home, confident. Streets were clogged enough as it was. If they had already won, why bother?
PAC, on the other hand, was busy with their ¡Salà a votar! (go out and vote!) campaign. And go out to vote people did.
Being on the winning side
Four years ago, when Otto Guevara ran for president, a lot of people who liked his job in the Asamblea didn’t vote for him for the presidency because “he didn’t have a chance“. Those people went out and either voted for Pacheco, because he looked like a kindly old man, or for Rolando Araya, because they were afraid of the chance of a senile old fool becoming president.
They wanted to feel like they had a chance of winning with their vote. Why waste your vote? was what I heard over and over.
I’ve got no doubt that happened again this time. The “everyone but Arias” camp looked at their Guevaras, their Echandis, their Ã?lvarez Desantis and thought why waste my vote? There was no way they would go with Arias – that was the reason they were flirting with other parties in the first place. PAC was there, ready, and looking like it had a shot. Why not? Wouldn’t it be nice if that arrogant Arias bastard got mud all over his face when he was forced into a second round?
If you want some numbers to back that up, here we go. So far Liberación Nacional has 40.5% of the presidential vote, and almost the same percentage for Asamblea Legislativa. These are people who are committed to the party, whatever happens – the type I described above. PAC has so far 40.28% of the presidential vote but only 25% of Asamblea vote. That 15% difference are likely people that don’t care about PAC’s legislative stance, or what the party claims they want to do with control of the Asamblea. That 15% went to other minor specialty parties, like the one oriented towards people with disabilities.
But those people, when faced with the choice of who to vote for president, decided to cast their vote maybe not for SolÃs, but for someone where it would count against Arias. Their need to be on the winning side, to not waste their vote, benefitted PAC.
In the end…
Who knows at this time what the hell will happen. Arias (let’s stop pretending this is about political parties) has 40.51% and SolÃs has 40.29%. There’s still 7.1% of the voting tables untallied, and 4.4% which have tally inconsistencies and need to be re-accounted. That’s a full 11.5% of the votes unaccounted for. Normally those would be insignificant, nothing but the error margin, but with a difference of 0.22% between the two parties it really can throw the election in either way.
I’ll hazard a guess, however. Over 60% of the votes untallied are outside urban areas, where Arias is stronger. A large number of those are in Cartago, Heredia and Alajuela, agricultural areas that have been told to fear CAFTA as if it were the apocalypse itself. Limón and Guanacaste are poor areas, where PAC’s litany against our growing inequality and how we need to even out the social classes finds fertile ground. I do fear that once the smoke has cleared, we’ll have Ottón SolÃs as president.
The sole idea is enough to make me hope that for once, my pessimism is absolutely, completely, flat out wrong.
Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics