Early exit polls late Sunday showed that presidential race will likely go into a second round, with the ruling leftist party headed to its worst electoral defeat in a generation.
Dark horse centrist senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise leader with over 32% of the vote, according to projections based on partial results by Ipsos and Captura polling firms.
Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, a right-wing former president who briefly led the country in 2001, was second with around 26%.
Business tycoon Samuel Doria Medina was projected to be in first place in pre-election polls, but he was relegated to third.
Meanwhile, the ruling Movement for Socialism, or MAS, party is on track to lose power after nearly 20 years of dominance.
Bolivia headed for unprecedented presidential runoff
Observers did not expect any candidate would reach the necessary majority in the first round.
Presidential candidates need to win more than 50% of the vote, or over 40% support with a 10 percentage point lead, to avoid a runoff.
The second round, scheduled on October 19, will be unprecedented in the country’s history.
Bolivia’s general election on Sunday has been overshadowed by the worst economic crisis in four decades and the absence of .
Bolivia’s possible political shift
Sunday’s vote could put an end to the Andean nation’s long-dominant leftist rule. For the past two decades, Bolivian politics have been defined by the ruling MAS party.
Its founder, Morales, who first came to power in 2006, has been barred from running this race by Bolivia’s constitutional court. It was ruled that he had already exceeded the two-term limit.
, who had fallen out with Morales, opted not to seek re-election due to his plummeting popularity.
Instead, Arce nominated a senior minister, Eduardo del Castillo, to be a MAS candidate. Projections late Sunday show that he had just over 3% of the vote.
Morales, who served three consecutive terms, urged his supporters to cast a blank vote in protest over his disqualification.
The ex-leader has been holed up in his political stronghold in Bolivia’s tropical region of Chapare for months as he evades an while in office.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko
The post Bolivia’s elections headed for first presidential runoff appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
