Q COSTARICA — The biggest challenge for Costa Rican political parties in 2025 has been to try to become the face of the opposition, a position that is unclear and could be crucial for the 2026 electoral process.
This is no small challenge in a country where, since 2021, more than 80% of Costa Ricans have declared they do not sympathize with any political party. So the path seems clear: it’s about the presidential candidate, rather than the devalued political parties.
In this scenario, President Rodrigo Chaves is making blatant attempts to transfer his popularity, as reflected in the polls, to the party that would try to give him continuity: the Partido Pueblo Soberano (PPSO), his third political venture in four years, after discarding the Partido Progreso Social Democrático (PSD) AND Aquí Costa Rica Manda (ACRM).
However, their presidential candidate, former Minister of Planning and of the Presidency Laura Fernández, seems to be trying to capitalize on the legacy of Chavismo, avoiding debates that might expose the doubts that the head of the ruling party’s faction, Pilar Cisneros, expressed when she hesitated to endorse her from the outset.
Nevertheless, the other candidates still appear far behind Fernández: in the poll conducted by the Center for Political Research and Studies (CIEP) at the University of Costa Rica (UCR), Fernández garnered 25%, followed distantly by Álvaro Ramos (Partido Liberación Nacional, PLN) with 7%, and Claudia Dobles and Ariel Robles (Coalición Agenda Ciudadana and Frente Amplio, respectively) with 3%.
Dobles’s husband, Carlos Alvarado, was president from 2018-2022.
The survey by the Institute for Social Studies in Population (Idespo) yielded similar results, with Fernández at 28% among those determined to vote, followed by Ramos at 6.2%, Robles at 2.9%, Dobles at 2.3%, and Juan Carlos Hidalgo of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC) at 1.2%.
The key for the coming months is winning over undecided voters, since both polls reported that more than half of those willing to vote have not yet chosen a candidate: this is the electoral prize that could make one of these candidates the face of the opposition, a position that is currently vacant.
These are not the only factors in a contest that is unusual in many ways. Perhaps the most unusual development has been the war that President Chávez declared against the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), in his eagerness to maintain a clearly electoral profile, and his questioning of the TSE’s authority to manage the electoral process, challenging aspects such as the electoral ban and the prohibition against public officials interfering in the process.
While government intentions to offer varying degrees of support to pro-government candidates have been commonplace, with tours and inaugurations, the decision to attack the TSE breaks the mold and aligns with the Chavista narrative of turning the campaign into a referendum on Cháves himself, rather than on the candidates, including his own representative, who has avoided debates to capitalize on the image of Chavismo.
Other elements are emerging in the contest with unprecedented prominence, such as the growing influence of social media, which is displacing traditional media as a source of information.
Along with this, the increasingly late decision-making process, almost at the point of casting the vote, can also be a factor in creating surprises. Again, the large number of undecided voters could allow a candidate, by capturing voters’ attention in the final months, to become the protagonist of an election that has been marked by polarization.