2018 Costa Rican general election

2018 Costa Rican general election

← 2014 4 February 2018 (first round) 1 April 2018 (2018-04-01) (second round) 2022 →
Presidential election
Turnout	65.70% (first round) 66.45% (second round)
Nominee Carlos Alvarado Fabricio Alvarado Party PAC PREN Running mate Epsy Campbell Marvin Rodríguez Ivonne Acuña Francisco J. Prendas Popular vote 1,322,908 860,388 Percentage 60.59% 39.41%
First round results by canton Second round results by canton
President before election Luis Guillermo Solís PAC Elected President Carlos Alvarado Quesada PAC
Legislative election
All 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly 29 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader % Seats +/– PLN Antonio Álvarez Desanti 19.49 17 −1 PREN Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz 18.16 14 +13 PAC Carlos Alvarado Quesada 16.27 10 −3 PUSC Rodolfo Piza Rocafort 14.60 9 +1 PIN Juan Diego Castro Fernández 7.67 4 +4 PRSC Rodolfo Hernández Gómez 4.21 2 New FA Edgardo Araya Sibaja 3.95 1 −8 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Map on the left shows the seats won by each party by province. The map on the right shows which party won the plurality in each province in both rounds of the Presidential election.

Politics of Costa Rica
Constitution Abortion law LGBT rights
Executive President (list) Rodrigo Chaves Robles Vice Presidents Stephan Brunner Mary Munive
Legislature Legislative Assembly (History) President: Rodrigo Arias Sánchez
Judiciary Supreme Court of Justice President: Fernando Cruz Castro
Administrative divisions Provinces and comarcas Cantons Districts Local government Indigenous territories
Elections Recent elections General: 2014 2018 2022 2007 CAFTA referendum Political parties
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General elections were held in Costa Rica in 2018 to elect both the President and Legislative Assembly. The first round of the presidential election was held on 4 February 2018, with the two highest-ranked candidates being Christian singer and Congressman Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz from the conservative National Restoration Party and writer and former Minister Carlos Alvarado Quesada from the progressive Citizens' Action Party, gaining 24% and 21% of the votes respectively. As no candidate received more than 40% of the first round vote, a second round run-off election was held on 1 April 2018 and was won by Carlos Alvarado Quesada, with a landslide victory of 60.6% of the vote.^[1][2]

The previously dominant National Liberation Party suffered its worst results to date, ending third in the presidential run for the first time in its history with its candidate former Legislative Assembly President Antonio Álvarez Desanti winning only 18%. Other notable candidates were lawyer and entrepreneur Rodolfo Piza from the center-right Social Christian Unity Party with 16% and right-wing populist Juan Diego Castro with 9%.

In the 57-seat Legislative Assembly, the National Liberation Party won 17 seats, the National Restoration Party won 14 seats (although their parliamentary group later split in half due to factionalism), the Citizens' Action Party won 10 seats, the Social Christian Unity Party won 9 seats, the National Integration Party won 4 seats, the Social Christian Republican Party (an offshoot of PUSC) won 2 seats and left-wing Broad Front won 1 seat.