Political centrist Luis Guillermo Solís was elected president of Costa Rica in a runoff vote Sunday, becoming the first third-party candidate to win in decades.
The Tico Times published live election results in the runoff between Citizen Action Party (PAC) candidate Luis Guillermo Solís and National Liberation Party (PLN) candidate Johnny Araya as they arrived from the Supreme Elections Tribunal. The results began coming in at 8 p.m. Sunday night.
Ignacio Solís, son of Costa Rica's presumed next president, Luis Guillermo Solís, shared a snapshot of himself right after voting for his "old man" in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. And just like in the first round of elections in February, James Alvarado became the first Tico to vote after casting his ballot in Sydney, Australia.
Though his main opponent stopped campaigning in March, Citizen Action Party presidential candidate Luis Guillermo Solís still needs to capture more than 50 percent of the votes in Sunday's runoff election to become Costa Rica's next president.
By mid-afternoon, 492 people had come to the polling station to cast their vote in the runoff election. “Usually it’s more animated,” said Ruth Garcia Jaen, a volunteer for the PAC campaign. “It’s too relaxed today.”
Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla cast her vote in Sunday's presidential runoff at 10:45 a.m. at the Joaquín García Monge elementary school in Desamparados, a canton south of the capital.
Swarmed by cameras, reporters and supporters, presidential frontrunner Luis Guillermo Solís of the opposition Citizen Action Party arrived at the Liceo de Curridabat, east of the capital, Sunday morning to cast his vote for Costa Rica's next president.
The National Liberation Party’s (PLN) "non-candidate," Johnny Araya, left his home in Rohrmoser, a wealthy neighborhood west of San José, at 9:30 a.m. Sunday to begin Costa Rica's second-round Election Day.
Although their candidate announced he was quitting the race back in March, members of the ruling National Liberation Party have blasted social media networks with get-out-the-vote messages for today’s presidential runoff.
