Runoff likely as Costa Ricans choose among 25 presidential candidates

(Image credit: LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images)

Costa Ricans go to the polls Sunday to choose their country's next president, but the day's voting is unlikely to produce a clear winner, Reuters reports.

If no candidate wins more than 40 percent of the vote, the top two will advance to a runoff election to be held in April. Twenty-five candidates are seeking the presidency, and none of them are polling anywhere near 40 percent.

Per Reuters, centrist former President José Maria Figueres, who was in office from 1994 to 1998, leads in the polls with about 17 percent of the vote, while center-right candidate Lineth Saborío, who served as vice president from 2002 to 2006, is polling in second place at around 13 percent.

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The candidate for the governing center-left Citizen Action party, which has been in power for two terms, is polling at 0.3 percent, and incumbent President Carlos Alvarado Quesada is constitutionally barred from serving a second consecutive term.

According to Al Jazeera, polls show that approximately one-third of Costa Rica's 3.5 million voters remain undecided.

All 57 seats in the country's unicameral National Assembly are also up for election.

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Grayson Quay was the weekend editor at TheWeek.com. His writing has also been published in National Review, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Modern Age, The American Conservative, The Spectator World, and other outlets. Grayson earned his M.A. from Georgetown University in 2019.