Bolivian citizens are called to vote this Sunday in presidential and legislative elections that, barring any surprises, will mark a political turning point in a country dominated for nearly two decades by the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), originally launched by Evo Morales, and which has been torn apart by fratricidal strife.
Eight candidates, all men, are aspiring to succeed the current president, Luis Arce, who, despite initially considering running again, ultimately resigned in May in a last-ditch attempt to unite forces against a rising right. “I will not be a factor of division,” he said at the time, after months of public confrontation with Morales.
This internal tension reached its peak at the end of June 2024, when not even the left responded unitedly to the attempted coup d’état perpetrated by a group of members of the Armed Forces. For Morales, it was the staging of a self-coup, despite there being no evidence of this hypothesis, and from then on, things have only gotten worse.
After his resignation, Arce endorsed former minister Eduardo del Castillo, also at odds with the “Evista” faction, as the official MAS candidate. Morales argues that the elections have no legitimacy and calls for a null vote, even suggesting that if the percentage is high, he will be the true moral winner at the polls.
TWO CONSERVATIVES AS FAVORITES
Eight candidates are finally vying for the leadership this Sunday, and polls predict a resounding defeat for left-wing interests. Del Castillo appears to have a negligible voting intention, while two old acquaintances from the political front lines stand out as favorites: Samuel Doria Medina and Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga.
Doria Medina, one of Bolivia’s richest businessmen and a regular on the ballot, has a slight advantage over Quiroga, who already knows what it means to be president, even if it’s only for a year after the departure of General Hugo Banzer. Both have a voter turnout of around 20 percent.
With these forecasts, it seems clear in any case that there will be a runoff on October 19, an unprecedented milestone since the 2009 Constitution introduced this final round if no candidate obtained more than 50 percent of the vote or 40 percent with a ten-point difference over their closest rival.
The main left-wing option for this Sunday is Andrónico RodrÃguez, who, despite being mentioned as a unified candidate for the MAS, ended up running on an independent list, Alianza Popular. At 36, the current Senate president is one of the youngest candidates, but his popularity has declined in recent weeks.
RodrÃguez has fallen below 10 percent, and in his recent rallies, he has called on all left-wing supporters to unite behind him, also aware that he may be the main victim of the spoiled vote demanded by Morales, which some studies put at up to 14 percent.
Added to the blank vote and the undecided, around a third of citizens are not leaning toward any of the legally running candidates in the polls.
BOLIVIA’S CHALLENGES
Arce has already promised, in any case, that he will guarantee a peaceful transition and hand over the baton of power to the winner of the elections, “regardless of who it is.” In this sense, and although he understands that “del Castillo is a ‘great choice,'” he sees himself capable of “making history” by being “a government of democratic transition.”
The president, who has governed since 2020—he obtained more than 55 percent of the vote at the time—declared in a recent appearance that he was proud of having preserved “democracy, above all else.”
However, he leaves his successor a country with no shortage of challenges, where almost half of children live in poverty, according to the UN, and with a weakened economy. GDP barely grew by 0.73 percent in 2024, and inflation soared that same year to nearly 10 percent, far from the economic engine it once was for the region as a whole.
