Uruguay presidential elections too close to call
November 25, 2019
An election recount has been ordered after Uruguay's presidential run-off vote was deemed too close to call by authorities early on Monday, dampening center-right candidate Luis Lacalle Pou's victory claims.
Unofficial results gave former senator Lacalle Pou just over a 1% lead over Daniel Martinez, a former Montevideo mayor with the ruling Frente Amplio (Broad Front) coalition, with ballots counted at more than 99.6% of polling stations.
The electoral court said the number of provisional or contested ballots, an estimated 35,000, exceeded the margin between the two candidates.
Pro-business Lacalle Pou, of the nationalist Partido Nacional (National Party), was backed by a united opposition seeking to overtake the governing leftist Broad Front coalition — which has won Uruguay's last three general and presidential elections.
'Never such a tight ballot'
"The court is not going to give a winner tonight," Electoral Court president Jose Arocena told reporters. "There was never such a tight ballot."
The final results are expected to be on hold until the rest of this week. Arocena said the ballot recount would start on Tuesday morning and completed on Friday.
Candidates wait
The National Party was ordered to hold back celebrations but Lacalle Pou was confident his victory would be confirmed. "Everybody knows it and they don't accept it," Lacalle Pou said when he addressed supporters after midnight, adding that Martinez "has not called me and has not conceded a result that we believe irreversible."
"Presidente! Presidente!" chanted his supporters.
In the early hours of late Sunday, Martinez said: "We need to wait to know the final results."
stb/rt (AP, dpa, AFP)