The anti-Ortega vote reaches a new high of 62% -- and he gets to be president anyway!

In this, his fifth time as presidential candidate of Nicaragua's Sandinista party, the anti-Daniel Ortega vote has hit a record high, with 62% of the electorate voting against him. If there is a trend here, it is anti-Sandinista. (By the way, Ortega has been declared the winner.)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/23/america/LA_POL_Nicaragua_Elections.php


Electoral Council confirms Ortega as Nicaragua's next president

(AP) Nov. 22, 2006

Nicaraguan electoral officials on Wednesday released the final results in the Nov. 5 presidential elections, confirming the victory of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.

With all of the votes counted, the Supreme Electoral Council declared Ortega the winner with 38 percent.

Eduardo Montealegre, a Harvard-educated economist running with the National Liberal Alliance, was second with 28.3 percent.

Jose Rizo of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party finished third with 27.1 percent and Edmundo Jarquin of the anti-Ortega Sandinista Renovation Movement finished with 6.3 percent.

Former Sandinista army commander Eden Pastora, who later led a breakaway Contra movement trying to oust the Sandinistas in the 1980s, received 0.3 percent of the vote.

It is the first time in modern history that a candidate in Nicaragua has won with less than half of the vote; a recent law change allows a first-round win to a candidate who gets at least 35 percent and finishes at least 5 percentage points ahead of the runner-up.

Ortega, who headed the leftist Sandinista government of the 1980s until losing an election in 1990, takes power Jan. 10.

Ortega's Sandinista National Liberation Front kept the 38 seats it had in the National Assembly. Jose Rizo's Liberal Constitutionalists has 25 and the National Liberal Alliance won 22. Jarquin's party won five.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/23/america/LA_POL_Nicaragua_Elections.php