What elections Latin America has in 2024 and how they can change a firm trend

Millions of Latin Americans in 2024 will be part of a phenomenon that is expected to mark a historical record: the year in which more voters go to the polls around the world.

Six Latin American countries are scheduled to hold presidential elections next year, while two others have municipal elections scheduled.

They make up a list of dozens of nations that bring together nearly half of the world's population and are preparing some type of election during 2024, from the United States to India, Russia or Indonesia.

Next year's electoral cycle also raises a special question for Latin America: will it be the breaking of a trend through which opponents in the region almost always win in recent years?

The Bukele case

The Latin American elections of 2024 begin with the general elections on February 4 in El Salvador, where the president on leave, Nayib Bukele, will seek to be re-elected.

This is a controversial nomination, since the Salvadoran Constitution prohibits presidents from seeking a new consecutive five-year term.despite which the Supreme Court of Justice endorsed it in 2021 and Congress approved in November a six-month license from office requested by Bukele to focus on his campaign.

Bukele is accused by critics of having concentrated the power of the State in his figure, controlling the Justice and Congress, and of violating human rights to crush the gangs that were sowing terror in the country.

But this “iron fist” strategy against crime brought down El Salvador's very high homicide rate and allowed it to regain control of neighborhoods once dominated by gangs, which has made Bukele one of the most popular presidents in the world.

The polls now show him and his Nuevas Ideas party as the clear favorite to be re-elected, with voting intentions above 60%, while those of his rivals such as Manuel Flores (FMLN) or Joel Sánchez (Arena) are barely in the single digits. .

For this reason, Bukele could be the first Latin American leader to achieve reelection personally or for his party in government during 2024, something extraordinary in recent times for the region.

Paradoxically, it was with the election of Bukele himself in 2019 that began a series of 17 victories for the opposition in 19 presidential elections completed so far.

The two exceptions have been the reelection of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua in 2021, considered a “farce” in the West since his possible rivals were imprisoned, and the victory in April of the Paraguayan Colorado Party, which has only lost one presidential election in 76 years. .

Political scientist Victoria Murillo, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, observes that in the region in general “People are dissatisfied with what they have and vote for someone else, someone who is not like them” to the one who governs.

“Everything is a kind of how we get rid of the person on top of us who is not doing the things we want,” Murillo tells BBC Mundo. “What people call a wave of the right or the left is actually a wave of replacement.”

However, in 2024 there could be other exceptions to this rule apart from Bukele's likely re-election.

Historic vote in Mexico?

In Latin America, presidential elections are also planned in Panama (May 5), Dominican Republic (May 19), Mexico (June 2), Uruguay (October 27) and Venezuela (agreed for the second half of the year).

The ruling party appears with clear possibilities of winning in at least two of these cases.

In Mexico, although there are five months left to elect the successor of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and much can change, voting intention polls give a comfortable advantage to the former head of government of the capital, Claudia Sheinbaum, of the president's Morena party and candidate for the We Continue Making History coalition.

As his main rival appears Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator on leave who against all odds managed to be a candidate for the main opposition coalition, Frente Amplio por México, formed by the traditional parties PAN, PRI and PRD.

Analysts consider it unlikely that a third option with a chance of winning will emerge and anticipate that these elections could be historic if they consecrate the first woman elected president in the history of Mexico.

At the polls, positions of senators, deputies, governorships and other local authorities will also be renewed.

On the other hand, in the Dominican Republic, the president seeking re-election, Luis Abinader, appears as a favorite with more than 50% of voting intentions in some polls for the elections that will pit him against former president Leonel Fernández among other candidates.

If no one obtained half plus one of the valid votes in May, there would be a second round between the first two on June 30.

Alternations in power?

The outlook looks more complicated for the ruling party in Panama and Uruguay, and uncertain in Venezuela.

In the Central American country, after recent massive protests over a mining contract that was ultimately declared unconstitutional by the Panamanian Supreme Court, former president Ricardo Martinelli seems to capitalize on part of the discontent with the government of Laurentino Cortizo and emerges as the favorite candidate according to the polls.

But a recent sentence against Martinelli to 10 years in prison for money laundering could remove him from the electoral dispute if the Supreme Court ratified the ruling, which would improve the chances of other candidates such as former president Martín Torrijos and Ricardo Lombana against the current vice president and pro-government candidate José Carrizo, who is not taking off in the polls.

In Uruguay, voting intention polls give the left-wing Frente Amplio coalition a slight advantage to regain power against the parties that make up the government of Luis Lacalle Pou (National Party), whose Constitution prohibits immediate re-election.

But The Uruguayan electoral race will have more clarity after the parties nominate their candidates in internal elections scheduled for June.

If none of them achieved half plus one of the votes in October, there would be a runoff between the two most voted in November.

One of the most indefinite electoral scenarios of the year in the region is presented by Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro is expected to seek re-election in the position he has held for more than
a decade, although the legitimacy of his second term was questioned by many. of the community after the 2018 elections in which the opposition avoided participating because they considered them fraudulent.

After long negotiations, the government and the opposition agreed in October in Barbados to hold elections during the second half of 2024 in exchange for the lifting of some international sanctions on Venezuela promoted by the United States.

One of the big questions is what will happen to the candidacy of María Corina Machado, who won the opposition primaries by a wide margin in October and is preparing to face the government at the polls, but has been disqualified from holding public office.

Against the backdrop of an economic collapse that has caused more than seven million Venezuelans to emigrate, Polls suggest that Machado could defeat Chavista socialism that has been in power for 24 years.

But analysts doubt that the authorities will allow her to compete at the polls and warn that the issue could once again strain the political climate in a country where security forces have harshly repressed anti-government protests in the past.

The 2024 electoral agenda in Latin America, which also includes municipal elections in Brazil and Chile in October, will modify the map of power in the region, although this time perhaps less than what some opponents aspire to.

Click here to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.

And remember that you can receive notifications. Download the latest version of our app and activate them so you don't miss our best content.