The Costa Rican 2022 Election Nightmare Is Almost Over

We at Outlier Legal have been following the 2022 Costa Rican election for the past months and let us tell you that we’re glad that this electoral process is almost over!

This will be our last election update before the March 6, 2022, presidential run-off between José María Figueres and Rodrigo Chaves.

On Monday, Costa Ricans will surely have a new elected President and we will move forward with whatever happens. There’s no way around it.

National low spirit

National elections have been stressful for several periods now, but this electoral campaign has been too painful for almost everyone.

Keep in mind that more than 40% of possible voters didn’t cast their vote on the February 6 first round, and the majority of those who did vote didn’t choose any of these candidates, so our national morale has been low during these uncomfortable but unavoidable weeks.

Independent of what happens on Sunday, most Costa Ricans will be relieved that at least the election is over. We have been struggling with a fiscal and political crisis for several years now, and most of us want the country to overcome them, but we all seem to bring in many very different solutions to the problem.

An example of that is that we had to choose between 25 presidential candidates for the first electoral round, from which Figueres got 27% support and Chaves 17%. This is why many Costa Ricans feel that they have to choose between two candidates they don’t like or feel represented by.

Nevertheless, polls are projecting that a majority is willing to vote this Sunday and people have already taken a decision on who they will support. Chaves is leading most surveys, but his advantage above Figures is shrinking according to some.

This is a sign of similar or even greater polarization than in the 2018 election, which was the biggest electoral nightmare we had before 2022 came around.

The Costa Rican electorate is highly unpredictable. In 2018, the presidential candidate Fabricio Alvarado excelled his opponent Carlos Alvarado in almost every survey leading to the run-off election, but the latter surpassed the former and became president with more than 60% support.

The same thing could happen to Figueres, but his circumstances are different since more than 60% of citizens don’t have a favorable opinion of him.

The latest polls

Out of the four surveys published this week, Chaves is still leading in three of them. Some polls give him an advantage of more than 10 points, but others conclude that he’s almost tied with Figueres.

There have been 18 surveys after the first electoral round, of which only three have shown Figueres as the winner. If it weren’t because these research studies have failed before, we could assume that Chaves will win, but it is not over until it is over.

How are ticos feeling? Well, more than half of those interviewed recently by the University of Costa Rica (UCR) say they are feeling either distressed or sad about the elections.

This doesn’t mean they are uninterested in the process. The interest in the election is at its highest point of the year according to studies from the UCR, with 61% having a high attentiveness to the campaign and 58% saying they are highly motivated to vote.

However, when you ask Costa Ricans about their opinions of the candidates, things get tricky. According to research from the firm Enfoques, 40% of voters have an unfavorable opinion about Chaves and 62% have nothing good to say about Figueres.

This has been the trend for several months and is something you can easily feel if you hear people talking about the candidates. The common thing is to say that you don’t like any of the two candidates but one of them is going to win.

The Costa Rican democracy

As you can see, things are not easy for Costa Ricans right now, but our democracy has survived bad times before and it can do it again.

Remember that Costa Rica is one of the only 20 countries considered “full democracies” by the Democracy Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit. At spot number 20 in the global index, the country holds the second-highest score in democratic parameters in Latin America, only surpassed by Uruguay.

Regarded as one of the best electoral systems in the world, Costa Rica has been holding fair and free elections ever since a time in which fair and free elections were not widespread in most parts of the world.

The last time someone dared to say the word “fraud” after an election, the country went into its last Civil War to decide the type of society it wanted to be. Decades of unquestionable elections have continued since, and it is likely that there will be more decades like these to come.

Almost 100 international observers will supervise all stages of the voting process this Sunday. Representatives from all over the world are coming to make sure the election is legitimate. More than 36,000 prosecutors have been accredited by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) to be present at the polls.

The TSE will announce the first results on Sunday after 8 p.m., and then we all hope that we can turn the page. Come whatever may.