Evo Morales tops polls one week after …

In the run-up to the election week in Bolivia, polls give Evo Morales nearly ten points more than the opposition candidate with the most expectations: the journalist and writer Carlos Mesa. Difference alone does not guarantee his fourth consecutive term to the President, but he is about to meet the second requirement to prevail in the first round: a floor of 40% of votes. The Bolivian electoral system indicates that it is won with more than 50% or with this percentage but provided that the difference is 10% on the second.

The leader of the Socialist Movement (MAS), according to a sample of Vía Ciencia distributed by the Unitel network, holds 38.8% of the electoral preferences and his rival of the Citizen Community (CC) at 28.4. The study was published last Friday. The other presidential candidates – there are seven others – are down sharply, with the exception of the nationalized Korean Chi Hyun Chung, who climbed to fourth place from nowhere with 5.8%. They compare him to Jair Bolsonaro for his evangelical imprint and a misogyny as marked as his attacks on the LGBT community since the Christian Democratic Party whose formula he directs. His case is a typical phenomenon of electronic churches, which he founded about seventy in the nation that adopted him.

Bolivia is the fastest growing country in Latin America in the last decade. This is why his election campaign is based on two very specific axes. The success of the government in socio-economic, because it can show the benefits enjoyed by the vast majority of the population whose per capita income has tripled. The other axis is the opposition campaign aimed at examining Morales' legitimacy through a referendum saying "no" – at a narrow margin – when he aspired to that, his fourth postulate. A judgment of the Plurinational Constitutional Court (CPT) of 28 November 2017 allowed him to file his case on the basis of Article 256 of the Constitution and the American Convention on Human Rights.

Evo arrived at the government on January 22, 2006 and, during his nearly fourteen years of tenure, he suffered predictable wear and tear. But this characteristic common to all long-term management has not resulted in an obvious drop in its image. On the contrary, according to a study by the CELAG organization, it is so positive in the population that it reaches 54%. But also, he could win in the first round and he would also win in a possible ballot but in a tighter manner. For the moment, it prevails in six of the nine departments of Bolivia: La Paz, Oruro, Cochabamba, Pando, Chuquisaca and Potosi, although in the latter a civic strike continues indefinitely.

Last Saturday, Morales committed an act in Potosí where he denounced: "Some groups say that if Evo wins, we will ignore his victory. If Evo wins, they have already planned, I want them to know, make a move. Then they talk about democracy, then they accuse us of dictatorship, there are the coup d'etat groups. Saturday, October 26, the president will be 60 years old and will follow his political future. His main rival, in an interview he gave to the German TV channel Deutsche Welle, contested: "I do not recognize Morales' illegal candidacy, but I'm participating in the elections because I'm not going to give him the Election as the Venezuelans gave it to Chavismo. "

Evo employees put the victory back. Government Minister Carlos Romero said in an interview with Unitel: "In all surveys, MAS has a considerable advantage, but two factors also encourage us to ensure that the national elections will take place on October 20th. a first round: the hidden vote and the fact that people finally opt for certainty. Evo Morales is the only candidate who gives a certainty of sustainability to the country's economic growth. "

His counterpart is Ricardo Paz, national coordinator of the citizen community. Exultante said that "the end of Evo Morales as a leader is close" because "the trend is to a very important and overwhelming growth of Carlos Mesa.The second round is a fact." The optimism of the opposition led by former vice-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada – who succeeded him as president during the so-called "gas war" and Evo's growing popularity as a cocalero leader – is based on the same Unel poll that gives Morales victory. It turns out that this recent sample gives Evo fewer percentage points of advantage when compared to another in September.

Bolivian Senator Oscar Ortiz de Santa Cruz, in third place, with 9.6%, and Korean doctor and pastor Chi Hyun Chung in fourth place. For the congressman of the East, who has deepened these days his election campaign in Chiquitania, where there have been serious forest fires, the polls do not give him a national projection allowing him to move Mesa of the second round . On the contrary, Chi addresses the flow of Ortiz votes and the candidate of the community citizen remains the main opponent of Morales.

Bolivia will elect, in addition to its presidential formula (Evo repeats with Álvaro García Linera as partner), about 130 deputies of the Plurinational State and 36 senators at a rate of four for each of the nine departments. All charges will cover the 2020-2025 period and if the tie-up occurs, it will be December 15, almost two months after the first round. In this case, Evo – according to the Intel poll released last week – would win with 44% vs. 40% of Mesa as the opposition vote would increase if it accompanied the candidacy of his rival.

The Bolivian electoral law provides that if the remaining forces that aspire to join the government do not get a floor of 3% of the vote, they will lose their legal status. Today, they run this risk since the historic Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) founded on June 7, 1942 by two former presidents, such as Víctor Paz Estenssoro and Hernán Siles Zuazo, for much more recent parties, such as that the Third movement of the system of Felix Patzi, Governor of the Department of La Paz and former Minister of Education Evo. Many of them do not exceed 2% of the votes cast in today's polls.