Nicaragua chooses new president (latest vote count)

[IndianaGreen]

Here is the latest vote count from Nicaragua's La Prensa:

Daniel Ortega 33.8%

Eduardo Montealegre 25.4%

José Rizo 17.1%

Edmundo Jarquín 14.8%

Edén Pastora 0.6%

http://www.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2006/noviembre/05/elecciones/portada/

Here is the BBC story, to comply with LBN rules:

Nicaragua chooses new president

Last Updated: Monday, 6 November 2006, 00:12 GMT

Nicaraguans have finished voting in elections to decide whether former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega should become the next president.
The Sandinista leader has been leading his main challenger, the conservative Eduardo Montealegre, in opinion polls.

Mr Ortega says he has changed from the leader who seized property from the wealthy during a 1979 revolution.

The poll is being watched by the US, which is concerned that its former Cold War enemy could be returned to power.

Mr Ortega's opponents say he would take the nation back to the days of the civil war with the Contra rebels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6117704.stm

[bluestateguy]

1. Do they have bullshit runoffs?

Do they?

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. Not This Time, The Leading Candidate Has To Lead The Next

leading candidate by five points. Looks like Ortega has achieved that requirement.

[David in Canada]

7. Yes, they do...

In the first round, the first place candidate must have 40% of the vote OR 35% of the vote AND a 5-point lead over his/her nearest challenger.

Until this election, the rule was to be declared the victor, the first place candidate needed a clear 40% of all votes cast. Former President Ortega made a deal with former President Arnoldo Aleman to not vote to strip him of Congressional immunity (Aleman is a member of Nicaragua's Congress) in return for Aleman's faction of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (Conservative, despite the name) voting for the prerequisite Constitutional changes, as Ortega is very unlikely to win a runoff, AND 35% is considered his ceiling of support.

In the runoff, if there is one, expect Jose Rizo's voters to swing towards Eduardo Montealegre. Most voters for Mssrs. Pastora and Jarquin will go to Mr. Ortega, albeit some cast for Edmundo Jarquin COULD go to Montealegre as he had sizable support from the anti-Ortega left/left-of-centre.

[arcos]

10. Do you consider runoffs a bullshit?

Personally I think they are needed everywhere... it is the only way to guarantee majority rule. In my country we have a 40% threshold, and last February the leftist lost with 39.9% of the vote against 41.1% of the right winger... the other 19% of the people chose other candidates and their opinion didn't count. After all, majority rule is 50%+1. Even though most of the other parties were right of center, the runoff would have been real close because the right winger represented politics as usual and people were (and still are) really tired of them.

[wellst0nev0ter]

2. Wow, The Wall Street Journal Is Gonna Have Conniptions

The lizard brains at the editorial board were more concerned about the Nicaragua's election than our own.

[Cocoa]

3. he needs to break 35%

any idea what % of the vote has been counted?

[havocmom]

5. And where is Olly North?

I wanna know.

[Cocoa]

9. he's down there, believe it or not

why they let him in the country I don't know...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4309929.html

Did one of America's staunchest conservatives help Daniel Ortega?

Back in the 1980s, Oliver North was a White House aide who coordinated the diversion of profits from secret arms sales to Iran to anti-Sandinista guerrillas in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair.

But the latest mission to Managua by North, author and television show host, may have inadvertently boosted Ortega's campaign for the presidency.

After visiting a memorial for fallen Contra rebels in the Nicaraguan capital last month, North endorsed former Nicaraguan Vice President Jose Rizo as the best man to beat Ortega in Sunday's election. As for Ortega, North told Nicaraguan television: "That's not good for your country. That's not good for my country."

more...

[havocmom]

13. I know he's there. But WHERE there and doing WHAT?

He is nothing but trouble.

[IndianaGreen]

6. I haven't seen the number of ballots counted

The live TV feed is showing a lot of controversy involving some of the ballots, and they had a woman complaining earlier today that her brother was prevented from voting.

BTW, she also showed a purple finger, like Iraqis did.

[Robbien]

8. Nicaraguans hiked miles through the jungle,

paddled canoes down remote rivers and waited under a searing sun to vote Sunday.

And here in the USA we have to call and beg people to vote.

I really hope that the Nicaraguan vote doesn't stall in the middle of the night and then mysteriously change totals to favor the rightwing. So many Latin/South American vote counts have mysteriously stalled this year.

[EFerrari]

11. I was just reading today a memoir of the Contra War.

And all the horrible things Reagan did in Nicaragua -- including terrifying whole villages in the Miskitia by telling them the Sandinistas were going to bomb them and so forcing them to flee into Honduras FOR NOTHING! The faked "atrocities" against these Indians. The trainers from Laos and Argentina for the so called "Contras" and the death squads in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and in El Salvador.

I hope Ortega wins what they stole from him the first time around. Only BushCo can recreate the atrocities perpetrated against the people of Nicaragua because BushCo initiated them in the first place.

[arcos]

12. That's not the vote count, it's a poll and not even an exit poll...

Below the chart, it says "Encuesta de intención de voto realizada entre el 19 y el 22 de octubre".

[Robbien]

14. So it is very possible the numbers tomorrow will be

completely different.

I was just reading a blog by an American living in Nicaragua who said the polling stations closed early in the poorer districts(5p instead of 8p). The blog also mentioned problems in issuing voting ID cards in the poorer areas.

[Vidar]

15. Viva Ortega!

[Scurrilous]

16. "Electoral authorities will release preliminary vote results ...

...after midnight New York time, said Jennifer McCoy, a director at the Carter Center, which is leading an international delegation of election observers in Nicaragua."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a22Hh6LOwaOU&refer=latin_america