On June 9, the primaries for regional governors and mayors were held in two regions and 60 communes in the country.
For the researcher of LyD’s Politics and Civil Society Program, Francisco Alcorta, after these elections there is still a long way to go to know who will finally be on the ballot for the October elections. “The primaries played a role in reducing, to some extent, the uncertainty of knowing who will finally compete at the pact level. However, independents still have something to say in this competition,” says Alcorta.
The above, according to the Political Scientist, since, in the 2021 elections, of a total of 566 independent candidates who did not compete under a list, 105 managed to be elected with 28.6% of the votes. According to information from Servel, currently in 289 communes at least one applicant is seeking sponsorship to be able to register as an independent candidate, adding a total of 1,409 applicants throughout the national territory.
“When analyzing the number of applicants according to the communes where there were primaries, substantive differences are evident, which go in the opposite direction to what was expected, in the sense of the effect that the primaries would have on narrowing down the list of candidates. In the communes where there were none, the average number of independent applicants who are collecting sponsorships to be candidates for mayor is 4.3, while in the places where primary elections were held, the average is 6.6 applicants per commune. , explains Alcorta.
According to the researcher, the incentives and the current framework for the sponsorship of independent candidates is a factor that would be contributing to this high number of applicants, since if in previous elections we were accustomed to calls to “sign” in notaries or public places, currently This procedure has been simplified with the implementation of an online sponsorship system by Servel, which has significantly reduced the obstacles of the old process, despite the requirement of a minimum sponsorship of 0.5% of the voters who have voted for in the most recent popular vote in the commune.
That is why Alcorta proposes that “after the primary elections, the political forces will turn with new spirits to prepare their strategies, in this sense considering the potential impact of the “independent factor”, especially at the level of mayors, is one more obstacle than politicians will have to overcome to avoid the risks of potential strategic lack of coordination that these silent applicants could cause.”
