By Amy Booth on June 15, 2025 from Buenos Aires
A splintered offering on both left and right means the presidential vote is likely to go to a second round
Bolivian electoral authorities have confirmed that voters will head to the ballot boxes on August 17 to elect their next president — but some of the biggest names in national politics will not be on the ballot.
Ten presidential tickets were registered and approved by the June 6 Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, by its Spanish initials) deadline, but they do not include current President Luis Arce or former President Evo Morales.
In an Ipsos Ciesmori poll published shortly after the 10 presidential tickets were announced, no single candidate had more than a fifth of the vote, with fragmentation on both left and right of the political spectrum.
“There’s a mirror image on the left and right of fragmentation into three or four main candidates,” said Diego Von Vacano, politics professor at Texas A&M University. “Then there will probably be a second round of one left versus one right-wing candidate.”
The candidates
Businessman Samuel Doria Medina (66; right in cover photo) came first in the poll, with 19%. A centrist social democrat, he served as planning minister during the 1990s under President Jaime Paz Zamora and has run for president three times before. In a recent interview with newspaper El País, he proposed closing public companies and implementing austerity measures to solve the country’s current economic crisis.
Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (65; left in cover photo) was vice president to Hugo Banzer, the former dictator who was democratically elected for a term in 1997. Quiroga served as president for one year, between August 2001 and August 2002, after Banzer stepped down due to ill health.
Coca growers’ leader and senate president Andrónico Rodríguez (36; center in cover photo) was ultimately given the go-ahead to run after legal challenges held his candidacy in limbo. He is running with Alianza Política after splintering from the ruling leftist Movement Towards Socialism (MAS, by its Spanish initials) party. Formerly seen as a Morales protégé, his split from the MAS was a “very big assertion of independence,” said Von Vacano.
“Andrónico saw that both Arce and Evo had worn out their appeal. They’d eroded bases, popular support, and moral authority. He’s been trying to argue that he’s the moral voice of the movement.”
Running for MAS is Eduardo del Castillo (36). He served as minister of government under the Arce administration, a role that gave him extensive control over the police and armed forces. Close to the current government, he would be well-positioned to protect Arce from any legal trouble once he left office, according to Von Vacano.
El Alto Mayor Eva Copa (38) is running with the National Renovation Movement (Morena). She surged to prominence after becoming senate president following the coup that pushed out Morales and many of his top officials in 2019. A MAS member at the time, she grew a support base from those who saw her as standing up and facing the music during Jeanine Áñez’s far-right interim presidency. However, she split with the MAS after they failed to make her their El Alto mayoral candidate. She split to form her own party and steamrollered the opposition, securing 69% of the vote. Despite this, she is seen as lacking the broader political and nationwide support base she’d need to carry her to the presidency.
Manfred Reyes Villa (70) is mayor of the city of Cochabamba, in Central Bolivia, a role he also held in the 1990s. Before going into politics, he served in the Bolivian military, and his law-and-order discourse could prove popular with right-wing voters, according to Von Vacano.
A handful of smaller candidates are also in the race, but they are not currently expected to win. These include libertarian financial consultant Jaime Dunn, centrist senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira, businessman Paulo Folster, and Santa Cruz city mayor Jhonny Fernández.
The known names that aren’t on the list
Leftist former President Evo Morales intended to run for re-election. However, he was unable to form an eligible party after splitting with MAS. Morales faces charges of statutory rape and trafficking — accusations he is also facing in Argentina. For months, he has remained sequestered in Chapare, his base of support in the tropical region of Cochabamba department, to escape arrest.
Morales initially attempted to run again with a miniscule party known as Frente para la Victoria (Victory Front), but the alliance crumbled and he was unable to make alternative arrangements.
Moreover, Bolivia’s Plurinational Constitutional Court ruled on May 13 that nobody can serve more than two terms as president or vice president, irrespective of whether those terms are consecutive. Morales served three consecutive terms as president between 2006 and 2019.
Morales’s supporters blocked roads to protest his omission from the list. At the time of this writing, the security forces had cleared the blockade on the major highway between Oruro and Cochabamba. Five people — four police officers and one civilian — had been killed in the clashes.
Current President Luis Arce was eligible to run for re-election, but announced in mid-May that he was pulling out of the race. The leftist economist has presided over an economic crisis that has seen dollar reserves dwindle, parallel exchange rates pop up, and double-digit inflation take hold, and his popularity has tanked.
Some prominent figures on the Bolivian far right, including Áñez and Luis Fernando Camacho, are in prison over the 2019 coup and are not running.
The economic crisis has prompted Bolivians to make comparisons with Argentina, Von Vacano said. In some quarters, he said, “Argentina is being portrayed as both the model of the crisis — and of the solution.”
Source: Buenos Aires Herald