Montevideo (Uruguay), 25 Nov

Uruguay's leftist opposition candidate, Yamandu Orsi, became the country's new president in a tight runoff Sunday, ousting the conservative governing coalition and making the South American nation the latest to rebuke the incumbent party in a year of landmark elections worldwide.

Even as the vote count continued, Alvaro Delgado, the presidential candidate for the center-right ruling coalition, conceded defeat to his challenger while surrounded by sullen-looking family members and colleagues.

“The country of liberty, equality and fraternity has triumphed once again,” Orsi said to sprawling crowds of supporters that waved flags and shouted their support. “I will be the president who calls for national dialogue again and again, who builds a more integrated society and country.”

As initial exit polls began showing Orsi, 57, a working-class former history teacher and two-time mayor from Uruguay's Broad Front coalition, holding a lead over Delgado, cheers rang out across Montevideo's beaches.

Delgado told supporters gathered at his own party's headquarters in the capital of Montevideo that he had lost. The crowd was hushed.

“With sadness, but without guilt, we can congratulate the winner,” he told them. "But it's one thing to lose the elections and another to be defeated. We are not defeated," he added, generating a burst of applause.

A political heir to former President Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-Marxist guerilla who became a global icon for transforming Uruguay into one of the most liberal and environmentally sustainable nations in the region, Orsi rode to power on promises of safe change and nostalgia for his left-wing party's redistributive social policies.

He struck a conciliatory tone, vowing to unite the nation of 3.4 million people after such a tight vote.

“Let's understand that there is another part of our country who have different feelings today,” he said, as fireworks erupted over his stage overlooking the city's waterfront. “These people will also have to help build a better country. We need them too.”

With nearly all the votes counted, electoral officials reported that Orsi won 49.8% of the vote, ahead of Delgado's 45.9%, a clear call after weeks in which the opponents appeared tied in polls.

The rest cast blank votes or abstained in defiance of Uruguay's enforced compulsory voting. Turnout in the nation with 2.7 million eligible voters reached almost 90%.

Analysts say that the candidates' lackluster campaigns failed to entice apathetic young people and generated unusual levels of voter indecision.

But with the rivals in broad consensus over key issues, the level-headed election was also emblematic of Uruguay's strong and stable democracy, free of the anti-establishment fury that has vaulted populist outsiders to power elsewhere, like the United States and neighbouring Argentina.

Orsi's win ushers in a return of the Broad Front that governed for 15 consecutive years until the 2019 election of center-right President Luis Lacalle Pou.

“I called Yamandu Orsi to congratulate him as President-elect of our country and to put myself at his service and begin the transition as soon as I deem it appropriate,” Lacalle Pou wrote on social media platform X.

The opposition's upset was the latest sign that simmering discontent over post-pandemic economic malaise favors anti-incumbent candidates. In the many elections that took place during 2024, voters frustrated with the status quo have punished ruling parties from the US and Britain to South Korea and Japan.

But unlike elsewhere in the world, Orsi is a moderate with no plans for dramatic change. He largely agrees with his opponent on driving down the childhood poverty rate, now at a staggering 25%, and containing an upsurge in organised crime that has shaken the nation long considered among Latin America's safest.

Orsi is also likely to scupper a trade agreement with China that Lacalle Pou pursued to the chagrin of Mercosur, an alliance of South American nations promoting regional commerce.

Despite Orsi's promise to lead a “new left” in Uruguay, his platform resembles the mix of market-friendly policies and welfare programs initiated under President Mujica and other Broad Front leaders.

From 2005-2020, the coalition presided over a period of robust economic growth and pioneering social reforms that won widespread international acclaim, including the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and sale of marijuana.

Mujica, now 89 and recovering from esophageal cancer, turned up at his local polling station before balloting even began on Sunday to praise Orsi's humility and Uruguay's proud stability.

“This is no small feat,” he said of his nation's “citizenry that respects formal institutions.”

Orsi, who for a decade served as mayor of Canelones — a town of beaches and cattle ranches also home to a Google data center and upstart tech scene — proposes tax incentives to lure investment and revitalize the critical agricultural sector. He supports security reforms that would lower the retirement age but fall short of a radical overhaul sought by Uruguay's unions that failed to pass in the Oct. 27 general election.

In that first round of voting — in which neither front-runner secured an outright majority — voters rejected generous pay-outs and the redistribution of privately managed pension funds in a rare gesture of fiscal constraint.

“He's my candidate, not only for my sake but also for my children's,” said Yeny Varone, a nurse at a polling station who voted for Orsi. “In the future they'll have better working conditions, health and salaries.”

Delgado, 55, a rural veterinarian with a long career in the National Party, served most recently as Secretary of the Presidency for Lacalle Pou and campaigned under the slogan “re-elect a good government.”

With inflation easing and the economy expected to expand by over 3% this year, Delgado promised to continue his predecessor's pro-business policies. Lacalle Pou, who constitutionally cannot run for a second consecutive term, enjoyed high approval ratings, around 50%.

Sunday's outcome showed Uruguayans' growing discontent with the government's failure to reverse a decade of sluggish economic growth and contain crime over the past five years. Some also attributed Delgado's loss to his lack of charisma and weak campaign strategy.

“Delgado struggled with communication defending the government's agenda,” said Nicolás Saldías, a Latin America and Caribbean senior analyst for the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit.

“He was focused on criticizing the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) rather than giving a positive vision of what his government would do. It was a fear-based campaign that did not satisfy enough voters.”

After such a suspense-filled, close race, Orsi said his win gave him a “a strange feeling that I think takes a while to come to terms with.”

“Starting tomorrow, I'll have to work very hard,” he told The Associated Press from the glass-walled NH Columbia hotel, thronged exuberant friends and colleagues. “There's a lot to do.”

His government will take office on March 1, 2025.