By Daniel Roselli. When the voices of corruption complaints in the Salto Grande dam had been silenced, the candidate Álvaro Delgado named Valeria Ripoll as his running mate and the white internal was shaken up again. Then, the Ministry of Defense reiterated the purchase of airplanes, and immediately the Hercules appeared that do not work. When the darkness was dispelled, corruption appeared in Artigas and again, the plugs blew.
All of this affects the image and voting intention of Uruguayans.
President Luis Lacalle is a kind of Luis Suárez of politics: a percentage of Uruguayans loved him even if the national team did not play well and was thrashed by Brazil or Argentina, or we did not get past the group stage in the World Cup in Qatar.
The same thing happens with Lacalle, his image is maintained, he is popular, but his team plays poorly, with players who resign or are prosecuted and with a socio-economic result that affects the social foundations. There is a lack of resources in education, in health, in security, in housing…
As is currently the case in Argentina, where President Javier Milei is supported, in our Uruguay we support Luis Lacalle, no matter what happens. The president distances himself from his own administration and maintains his image based on selfies, inaugurations and that mix of traditional and modernist politician.
Figure Survey
Given this background, the president’s team is in decline, turned on its own. Even the Colorado outsider Andrés Ojeda is collecting votes. This is what the first Cifra survey shows, known after the internal elections, with all the presidential formulas defined and voters able to decide their vote based on the candidates for president and vice president, already defined in each party.
Faced with this new scenario and with the cards on the table, this first survey reflects that the number of undecided voters will increase slightly, from 10 to 13%.
Three months before the national elections in October, the Cifra survey continues to show a divided scenario with an advantage for the opposition. The Frente Amplio has 45% of voting intentions and remains the same as before the primaries. The National Party has a voting intention of 27%, followed by the PC with 9%, Cabildo remains at 3% and the PI at 1%. The parties of the Coalition together have 40% of voting intentions, 5 points less than what the Frente Amplio would obtain today.
The movements after the internal elections
The post-primary movements show a growth only for the PC, which rises by one point and a fall for the PN, by six points. The other parties maintain the support they had just before the internal elections. It seems that the election of the candidates for president and vice president hardly changed the previous climate, when the potential offer of candidates was considerably more numerous.
Stability is great, except for the PN
Beyond the primaries, since the beginning of this year the FA has fluctuated between 45 and 47%, but it has been at that low point for two months now. It is a high starting point for this new stage of the campaign, but it must maintain it (and increase it) to win. The PN had 33 points of voting intention, prior to the primaries, but that was its highest point, even higher than it had in the last cycle, where with less than a third of the votes it was able to go to the runoff and win. Today it is at its lowest point: 27%, the lowest so far this year.
The PC is slowly growing and the campaign, along with the results of the internal elections, may be helping. In the last electoral cycle, at this point in the campaign, the Colorado Party had achieved much greater support, which quickly fell.
