Montevideo: Uruguayans went to the polls Sunday for a second round of voting to choose their next president, with the conservative governing party and the left-leaning coalition locked in a close runoff after failing to win an outright majority in last month’s vote.
The election has turned into a hard-fought race between Álvaro Delgado, the incumbent party’s candidate, and Yamandú Orsi from the Broad Front, a
coalition of leftist and centre-left parties that governed for 15 years until the 2019 victory of centre-right President Luis Lacalle Pou.
It oversaw the legalisation of abortion, same-sex marriage and the sale of marijuana in the small South
American nation.
Orsi’s Broad Front took 44 per cent of the vote while Delgado’s National Party won just 27 per cent in the first round of voting October 27.
But the other conservative parties that make up the government coalition — in particular, the Colorado Party — notched 20 per cent of the vote collectively, enough to give Delgado an
edge over his challenger this time around.