At stake in Sunday’s election was a controversial decision to legalize gay marriage, after the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled that prohibiting same sex marriages was a form of discrimination. The winning candidate, Carlos Alvarado, said he would back the decision. His opponent, Fabricio Alvarado, a staunch conservative Christian, from a minor party, rode a wave of backlash to jump from single digits in the polls to finish first the opening presidential round in February.
As you can see in the graphic below, although Carlos Alvarado enjoyed an overwhelming victory nationwide, Fabricio Alvarado was able to secure significant margins in the mostly rural provinces of Limón and Puntarenas. Even in the one mostly rural province that Carlos Alvarado won, Guanacaste, he still performed worse than his national numbers – 58.8 percent in Guanacaste versus 60.7 percent nationwide.
Costa Rica only has only one true metropolis. Over the decades, urban sprawl has slowly connected small cities in the middle of the country – San José, Alajuela, Heredia and Cartago – into a somewhat unified metro area that Costa Ricans call “the central valley.” It’s here where Carlos Alvarado won Sunday’s election and where the left-of-center Citizen Action Party has traditionally dominated.
The cosmopolitan culture of the central valley was best exemplified by women voters who showed up to the polls on Sunday and in February’s first round dressed as “handmaids” from Margaret Atwood’s science fiction novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which depicts a religious, patriarchal dystopia. A television series on the online streaming service, Hulu, is likely what vaulted the Canadian novel into the consciousness of Costa Rica’s urban left.
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