Bolivian election exit polls show socialist candidate ahead - DW (English)

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Early exit polls suggest Luis Arce, an ally of former president Evo Morales,might have secured enough support to avoid a runoff vote. Bolivians were voting in a repeat of the 2019 election after which Morales fled.

An exit poll in Bolivia's high stakes presidential election gave socialist candidate Luis Arce the lead he needs to avoid a run-off election. The quick-count Ciesmori polls were released late on Sunday by Bolivian media. They showed Arce with 52.4% of the votes and Carlos Mesa in second place candidate with 31.5%. 

Arce, a former economy minister, is an ally of former-President Evo Morales, while Mesa is a centrist who served as president in the early 2000s.  

To avoid a runoff, the winning candidate needed to secure more than 50% of the vote, or 40% with a lead of at least 10% over the second-place candidate.

Read more: Bolivia's presidential election could spark further instability

Without claiming victory, Arce thanked supproters and had a confident tone in a press conference shortly after midnight in the Bolivian capital La Paz. 

"We are going to work, and we will resume the process of change without hate," Arce told reporters. "We will learn and we will overcome the mistakes we've made [before] as the Movement Toward Socialism party."

A re-do election 

Bolivia erupted in violence in October 2019, when long-time President Morales was seeking a fourth term — despite the fact that he was not technically eligible to do so.

The country's high court gave him the green light to run, despite him having lost a referendum asking Bolivians if the constitution could be amended to add a fourth term. 

As results announced on election night were reversed two days later, handing a narrow victory to Morales, chaos erupted nationwide. The results' delay triggered violence that cost at least 30 lives, sparked food shortages, and led police and military leaders to force the former president into exile.

Read more: Opinion: Evo Morales' time is up in Bolivia

Prior to Sunday's vote, Bolivia's Supreme Electoral Court unanimously ruled against reporting preliminary vote totals as ballots are counted, advising that only the final tally should be reported, which could take up to five days.  

Conservative Senator Jeanne Anez, the interim president who did not take part in the election, asked voters to stay calm until final results were announced.

"Patience, we must all be patient waiting for the results without generating any type of violence," said Anez, referring to the vote count, which may take days. "I assure you we will have credible results."

Still cautioning that the results weren't yet official, Anez later congratulated Arce on his "apparent win" on Twitter. 

Landlocked Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the region, despite being resource rich. The election comes amid severe economic turmoil, with GDP expected to contract by 6.2% in 2020. 

jcg/msh (AFP, AP, dpa)

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