12 points on Bolivia's election
And it's not even over yet
In Bolivia’s first round, Senator Rodrigo Paz of the PDC came in first place with about 31% of the vote followed by Jorge Tuto Quiroga of Libre with 28% of the vote. Official results are here. The support for Paz was a surprise and upended the race.
Late surges are a regional trend. In last Thursday’s newsletter prior to the first round, I wrote, “there is a late surge by Senator Rodrigo Paz. Latin American elections in recent years have seen late surges drive lesser known politicians into second rounds.” The results for Paz are a reminder of the high uncertainty during first rounds where there are many candidates while voters who are angry at the whole system search for alternatives. It creates a form of “election roulette” where the winning candidate is whoever happens to be surging right around election day, which is not a recipe for strong parties and clear policy mandates from voters.
One of Paz’s strengths is that he is an ideological enigma. Is Paz center-left, center-right, or far right? In some ways, Paz has positioned himself as all things to all people: a leftist son of a revolutionary, a centrist with redistributive slogans, a right-wing opponent of MAS, and a protest candidate railing against corruption. Nailing down exactly how to describe him has challenged people.
From the left, Paz is the son of a former president who founded the "Revolutionary Left Movement" party in the 1970s and Paz was a member of that party, which once belonged to Socialist International, at the beginning of his political career. It gives him a certain set of old school leftist credentials and name recognition.
From the center, as Joshua Collins wrote, “‘Capitalism for all, not just for a few,’ was a recurring theme of his campaign.” Paz was trying to rebrand the “free market” ideology of the right into something that would benefit Bolivia’s poor communities. The slogan somewhat echoes Pedro Castillo’s call for no poor people in a rich country.
From the right, Paz is to the right of MAS and advocated against the current ruling agenda during the campaign. Following his first round showing, he received the swift endorsement of Doria Medina and other rightwing political leaders. With Evo and MAS defining what it means to be “left” in Bolivia, pretty much everyone else against Evo is defined as “right,” even if they once considered themselves socialists.
From the apolitical side, Paz also benefited by turning himself into a box for Bolivia's protest vote. He's not part of the MAS, but he's also not fully part of the right-wing elite who spent the past two decades running against the MAS. He pushed his anti-corruption narrative and his running mate is a former police officer who spoke loudly against corruption (see the AP profile of Edman Lara here). Many people voted for Paz as a way of voting against other candidates.
The MAS was rejected and the left is divided. After the 2020 election, MAS had 75 seats in the legislature, though they were divided among various factions that supported Evo, Arce, Rodriguez, and others. MAS will likely have 1 or 2 seats in the coming legislature and the total seats of various leftist parties will probably not even reach 10. Very rarely have we seen a total collapse of a major and longstanding ruling party like this (maybe the PRI in Mexico being the best analogy off the top of my head).
Boycotts don’t work. Evo’s boycott of the vote managed to get 17% null votes, a huge number, and also drove down turnout. But it didn’t delegitimize the election or the results in any way. Evo can still cause problems going into the second round and into the next administration, but put these results in the ever growing list of elections demonstrating the threats of boycotts and null votes are strategies of weakness that don’t change outcomes.
A huge shift in the Congress. As I wrote above, MAS currently controls 75 of the 130 seats in the current Congress. In the new Congress, the PDC will have 45 seats, Libre will have 37, and the Alianza will have 28. Any two of those parties can easily form a majority coalition with those numbers. The PDC also looks like it will control 15 of the 36 Senate seats, with Libre winning 12 and Unidad winning 8. Whoever wins the presidency will almost certainly begin with a massive Congressional majority, but also have potential coalition splits built in if their popularity fades.
Bolivia will be open for business. The next government in Bolivia is going to open up the economy and make it more market friendly. Expect to see a range of companies, particularly in the mining and energy sectors, jumping at the opportunity to enter the market.
Bad blood within the right could divide the ruling elite. It’s all feel-good emotions for the anti-MAS politicians in Bolivia right now. It may not last. Samuel Doria Medina, who came in third place with about 21% of the vote quickly conceded the race and endorsed Rodrigo Paz. Maybe he just saw which way the wind was blowing. More likely, he and Quiroga aren’t getting along. The two sides each wanted the other to drop out of the race in the first round and were angry the other didn’t back down. Bolivia’s opposition has sometimes been able to avoid their differences as they unite against Evo, but they won’t have Evo to blame once the new administration starts. Their differences will all be brushed aside for a few months in the new administration no matter who wins. But don’t mistake the temporary unity for permanent alliance.
Don’t underestimate the support for the left; the rejection of the MAS may only be temporary. Some of the left boycotted due to the request of Evo Morales, with 17% of voters casting null votes, and turnout was only around 60%. Over 7% of voters voted for Rodriguez’s AP, about 3% of voters chose the Arce-led MAS. Additionally, though hard to prove with specific numbers, some large portion of disaffected MAS voters decided to cast their votes for Rodrigo Paz. It’s a good time to recall that Arce won in 2020 with 3.4 million votes (55%) in the first round. There is a solid left and center-left voting block in Bolivia, probably over a third of the vote and maybe as high as 40%, that was divided and defeated in this election, but can potentially bounce back as an enormous force in the future.
Don’t expect the austerity chainsaw. Markets are excited for the new government in Bolivia to come and fix the economy. That’s easier said than done. The large majority of voters who want the MAS gone aren’t doing so because they want massive government spending cuts. A Milei-like fiscal agenda would hit a public opinion wall. While Quiroga would be on board with major cuts and an IMF program, Paz will be looking for other options. Even if the next administration and Congress are business and market friendly, the fiscal challenges are enormous, and the political support for the type of cuts necessary to meet those challenges will be difficult.
Brazil and China will manage just fine. I’ve read some analysts jumping to the conclusion that the government change in Bolivia will ice out China’s role in the country and that the new government will give a cold shoulder to Lula. The governments in Beijing and Brasilia are quite adept at managing relationships and transitions like this. Both are going to continue being major actors in Bolivia. The new government almost certainly brings better relations with the US and Argentina, but don’t expect that to come with a complete rejection of Bolivia’s other recent partners.
Praise for Arce. Luis Arce presided over a free & fair election amid significant political tumult and seems on track to manage a democratic transition that puts his whole party out of a job. That does not happen often enough in the Western Hemisphere, where the recent trend has been losing presidents fighting the entire way out, often in undemocratic ways. If Bolivia's transition goes smoothly (still an “if”), remember to take a moment to praise the president for that.
But the smooth transition is still an ‘if’. This is an incredibly difficult transition for Bolivia. As we’ve seen in other successful and failed transitions away from… stagnant? corrupt? semi-authoritarian? dictatorial? let’s just say “difficult”... difficult situations, winning an election is just half the battle. Transitions are an institutional process that can be interrupted and require some experience. There hasn’t been a true smooth transition in Bolivia in almost two decades (and some might argue almost never). Sitting governments can do a lot to make transitions more difficult, grab power or resources during a transition, or even attempt to prevent a transition from happening. This isn’t over until the presidential sash is on either Paz or Quiroga. There is a lot of space between now and then for something to go wrong.