Politics and Polls - 16 September 2020

Divisions among MAS's opponents mean Arce's chances of winning in the first round in Bolivia are rising.

Four items in today’s update:

• Bolivia - Another poll shows Arce and Mesa as top two

• El Salvador - Poll suggests big Bukele win in the midterms is likely

• Peru - Merino doesn’t have the votes

• Region - Remote schooling limitations 

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Bolivia - Another poll shows Arce and Mesa as top two

A Mercados y Muestras poll has Arce 25, Mesa 22, Añez 8 and Camacho 6. This poll matches other recent polls showing Añez dropping and Mesa consolidating his position as the best contender to face Arce in a runoff.

Those numbers include 32% of respondents who were undecided or refused to answer. With those voters removed (something that makes lots of assumptions and vastly increases the margins of error), the firm estimates the race becomes Arce 37, Mesa 33, Añez 12, Camacho 12.

If that reflects the current state of the race, it suggests Arce has a substantial chance of a first round win. While Mesa has consolidated his position as the second place candidate, having nearly a third of the vote go to other anti-MAS candidates definitely helps Arce’s chances of pulling off the 40% of the vote plus a 10% margin over Mesa that he needs. 

In the poll, Mesa beats Arce 47-33 in a hypothetical second round while Añez and Arce would be in a virtual tie at 38-37. 

Source: Pagina Siete

Other polls published in the coming week are likely to tell a similar story. Mesa is the strongest second place candidate but Arce may win in the first round if the anti-MAS vote remains divided. Additionally, MAS is likely to do quite well in the legislative races.

The other thing all of these polls are suggesting is that there is a strong chance that Arce will be right at the edge of a first round victory on election night, within a few percent either way. Given the controversies in the 2019 election, any election that is dependent on slow precinct reports or recounts creates the potential for tensions and disputes among the various factions.

El Salvador - Poll suggests big Bukele win in the midterms is likely

A poll from Universidad Francisco Gavidia (UFG) shows President Nayib Bukele remains popular. On a 1-10 scale, Salvadorans gave Bukele an average approval ranking of 8.67.

More importantly, this poll suggests that Nuevas Ideas (NI), the new party of President Nayib Bukele, will win 48% of the vote in next year’s legislative elections.

The polling firm estimates that would be enough to give his party 51 of the 84 seats in the legislature. GANA, the rightwing party that supported Bukele’s candidacy last year, and various coalition candidates could take as many as 19 more seats, giving Bukele a comfortable super-majority within the Congress. ARENA and the FMLN would be reduced to perhaps five to seven seats each.

One reason NI and its partners are likely to win so many seats is that Bukele’s team is making sure that their strongest candidate runs in each race and that they don’t divide the vote. There are locations where NI is choosing not to run or is running in coalition with GANA in order to increase the coalition’s odds of success. Bukele’s opponents within the political system are old, discredited and hopelessly divided. A unified opposition might have a chance of preventing a Buklele supermajority, but ARENA and FMLN party leadership are too busy fighting past battles to even consider that option.

The firm notes that their numbers are a very rough estimate as they do not have statistically significant samples in every district. The poll also included nearly 30% of people who refused to respond or were undecided. 

Peru - Merino doesn’t have the votes

Yesterday I wrote about the current political crisis in Peru. One piece of data from yesterday afternoon suggests President Vizcarra is likely to keep his job. Only 46 members of Congress voted to censure the minister of economy yesterday. It would take 87 votes to remove the president from office. Congress leader Merino does not seem to have the votes and appears to have lost some support in the past week due to the controversy of his calling military commanders to plan a transitional cabinet.

Region - Remote schooling limitations 

A new report from Save the Children looks at the challenges youth are facing in terms of poverty, education and lack of internet access around the world. Separately, a poll from Ideas Paz says over six in ten children in Colombia lack internet access to do remote schooling during the pandemic.

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