Blogging the democratic revolution
They grossly undercounted the amount of support shown by Evo Morales in that strikingly well-executed election this past Sunday. Boz goes into several reasons why in an extremely interesting post here.
Far-left and strongly anti-U.S. Evo Morales has won a decisive victory as president of Bolivia with over 50% of the popular vote, preventing any moves in Congress to deliver the election to any other candidate. There was nothing fraudulent about it, and voter turnout was an amazing 80%. Bolivians who are celebrating this are happy…
…according to exit polls. The AP report is here: COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AP) – Bolivia’s Socialist presidential candidate Evo Morales, who has promised to become Washington’s “nightmare,” held an unexpectedly strong lead over his conservative rival in Sunday’s election, according to two independent exit polls. The wide margin means Morales, a coca farmer who has said…
Source: El Universal Two years of riots, roadblocks, and instability have culminated in today’s impossibly important presidential election in Bolivia. Bolivia matters because as Bolivia goes politically, so goes South America. The country is often compared to Tibet but politically, it could also (imperfectly) be compared to Iowa, Ohio, or Peoria, Illinois. What direction this…
As growing numbers of elections approach and get down to the wire, Boz has all the latest poll numbers from around the region, giving one indication as to how they may go. Read it here.
That????s what happened in Venezuela today. I????m blogging live from Caracas, and today I saw utterly empty polling stations, one after another, guarded only by tinpot military men with big guns and the occasional red-t-shirted chavista troll on the street corner, standing around looking mean and intimidating for voters. On and off it rained, as…
The Primero Justice party has pulled out of the coming Venezuelan election Sunday, leaving just Hugo Chavez’s MVR party all by its lonesome to run for Congress. This news comes from Marta Colomina, a well-known journalist in Venezuela. This pullout represents the full unification of the Venezuelan opposition, something never seen in Venezuelan history. They…
…except Hugo Chavez’s MVR party, exiting because the electoral setup is utterly tainted. It lacks transparency, it lacks secrecy and it lacks integrity. By doing this, the opposition is saying: No more participating in fraud. It’s amazing that whole political machines can operate in unity like this. It is the first time I’ve ever seen…
On Dec. 4, Venezuela will hold Congressional elections. They are expected to be the final nail in the coffin of the Venezuelan opposition as dictator Hugo Chavez consolidates power and installs a Marxist regime. There are pretenses of them being legitimate as a vote however and therein lies the farce. A test of the Smartmatic…
Reuters has the first report here. The lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key candidate won over the bring-back-the-death-penalty candidate from the incumbent party. This is considered a suprise upset for the challenger who is said to be slightly more left-leaning, though I am curious about the name of his party ‘Liberal’ – which, internationally, means Libertarian. More to follow… UPDATE:…
This Sunday, Nov. 27, Honduras holds its presidential election. This is an important election because it’s seen by some analysts as the bellwether of how the all-important next 13 months of elections go in Latin America. Will Latam swing further left or move right with these elections? Honduras is expected to give some sort of…
Miguel Buitrago has uncovered new polling numbers in Bolivia as the elections close in there in less than a month. He’s got terrific insights and observations about the narrowing lead of Evo Morales in the election, along with some anomalies we might not have expected, like the fact that Morales is doing well in Santa…
Where’s the hemisphere going politically? Boz has an excellent news roundup showing the latest political cross currents. Among these are a poll showing left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador dropping down in the Mexican polls, Evo Morales of Bolivia apparently ticking downward, Michelle Bachelet of Chile a little lower and possibly facing a runoff and Lourdes…
In the wake of the Fox-Chavez spat, Mexico’s leftist presidential frontrunner, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has slid by nearly 8 basis points in the presidential polls. From a Goldman Sachs research note: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines – AMLO Slightly Down on the Polls According to pollster Mitofsky, in November Lopez Obrador (AMLO) lost some ground…
Miguel Buitrago at the first-rate MABB blog has the whole dynamic explained. The short story is this: Based on current polls, far-left leader Evo Morales is in nearly a tie with his nearest rival. Due to how legislative seats are distributed in the Senate, Morales may not get the majority of votes he needs in…
It’s final. A court in Colombia has ruled that President Alvaro Uribe can run for office again. A constitutional change is now in effect to allow a president to run for a second term. We’ve been waiting for this news for a long time and it’s reason to celebrate. Uribe is the most popular leader,…
Boz has an excellent roundup of all the week’s polls around Latin America as this critical coming election year beckons. It’s two weeks’ worth this time. Read it here.
Felipe Calderon’s entry into the Mexican presidential race for 2006 creates a whole new dynamic in the election. It’s something I’ve believed since the beginning. Calderon is from the right-leaning PAN party, same as incumbent President Vicente Fox, but he comes across as a different player because he wasn’t Fox’s choice as successor. Fox himself…
Breaking news – and likely trouble. An electoral board has ruled that the Dec. 4 presidential election will not go through, due to a redistricting dispute. Now, the possibility of roadblocks and using food as a weapon looms. The current caretaker president – who’s in office only because the last two presidents were thrown out…
The bloggers have come up with a real big one on voter fraud in Venezuela. Miguel explains it out very well here. Venezuelan congressional elections are being held on Dec. 4 and a court has ruled in favor of stacking the vote today. See my post here. But that’s not the only problem. Now Javier…
In a significant defeat for Venezuela’s democracy, a new voting system installed by the Chavista government, called ‘los morochas’, which disproportionately benefits Chavista incumbents, was affirmed by Venezuela’s Supreme Court, an appointed body stacked with Chavista loyalists. It is expected to raise Hugo Chavez’s representation in the Congress – where he already has a majority…
Boz has an excellent roundup of all the polls being taken around the hemisphere, with at least one for each country. The polls are invaluable tools for sensing which way the winds of change are blowing in this coming fateful election year in the Americas. He also has a link to a very valuable poll…
Given that politicians tend to hone to their campaign financiers’ agendas, it’s pretty creepy to see that Evo Morales has gotten a new Web site – financed and hosted, not from his home country, as any self-respecting candidate for president would want, but brazenly from MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA. Morales, you will recall, is running for president…
Boz has a new collection of polls from around the Americas, and with more than a dozen elections scheduled for this hemisphere in the coming year, they are all worth watching. One of the most significant polls he’s found is on Mexico, showing that upstart-dinosaur Arturo Montiel Rojas, was running even with establishment-dinosaur Roberto Madrazo,…
An international panel ruled that the Mexican government cannot prevent former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda from running for president as an independent in 2006. Castaneda is a former NYU professor who, although distinctively left-leaning, is on the DEMOCRATIC left, and more to the point, is not a muddlehead. He wrote the first scathing biography of…