The National Integration Party is a political party in Costa Rica. The party mainly endorses perennial candidate Dr. Walter Muñoz Céspedes, a San Jose medical doctor and five-time presidential candidate, normally with about 1% or less of the vote. In the 2018 election, it endorsed the candidacy of former minister and defense lawyer Juan Diego Castro reaching 9% of the vote, although Castro and the party angrily split pathways soon after the election.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 5 February 2006. In the presidential election, Óscar Arias of the National Liberation Party, a former president and Nobel Peace Laureate, was victorious over Ottón Solís of the Citizens' Action Party and twelve other minor-party candidates. Although Arias was expected to win by a wide margin, the actual polling reports were unexpectedly close. However, early results showed the contest to be closer than it actually was. The preliminary official report, after 88.45% of the vote counted, showed the result for President of the Republic almost tied between Arias with 40.51% of the vote and Ottón Solís with 40.29%. Given the small difference of only 3250 votes, the Superior Electoral Tribunal announced that a manual count of all the votes would start immediately and no official winner would be announced until that process was completed, approximately two weeks after the election.
Costa Rica is administratively divided into seven provinces which are subdivided into 84 cantons, and these are further subdivided into districts. Cantons are the only administrative division in Costa Rica that possess local government in the form of municipalities. Each municipality has its own mayor and several representatives, all of them chosen via municipal elections every four years.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 7 February 2010. The ruling party before the election, the center-left National Liberation Party, put forward former Vice-President Laura Chinchilla as its presidential candidate, while the libertarian, Movimiento Libertario nominated former legislator Otto Guevara. Opinion polls before voting started consistently put Chinchilla as the front-runner, a trend confirmed in the election-night count, which showed her garnering 46.76% of the vote.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 3 February 2002. For the first time in the country's history, no candidate in the presidential election passed the 40% threshold. This meant a second round of voting had to be held on 7 April which saw Abel Pacheco of the Social Christian Unity Party defeat the National Liberation Party's Rolando Araya Monge.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on Sunday, 2 February 2014 to elect a new president, two vice presidents, and 57 Legislative Assembly lawmakers. In accordance with Article 132 of the constitution, incumbent President Laura Chinchilla Miranda was ineligible to run for a second consecutive term.
The Christian Democratic Alliance is a political party in the Cartago constituency of Costa Rica. It was founded in 2012, and is led by Mario Redondo Poveda, a former President of Congress and former member of the Social Christian Unity Party. In the general election of 2014, Redondo was elected to the only seat in the Legislative Assembly won by the ADC. Another party of the same name was founded in San José but did not participate in the election. According to its statutes the ADC intends to enrol at national level in the future.
Municipal elections were held in Costa Rica on 5 December 2010. Were the third municipal elections in the history of the country and the last on be held in December of the same electoral year due to an electoral reform that turned municipal election to be held mid-term. Because of this the Electoral Supreme Court mandate the constitutional period of the newly elected authorities to last for 6 years for one unique time. The election was for mayors of the 81 cantons, syndics and district councilors for all the country's districts and 8 Intendants for 8 especial autonomous districts.
The 2006 Costa Rica local elections were held on December 3, 2006. In the February 2006 general elections, Costa Rica elected president, vice-presidents, deputies of the Legislative Assembly and municipal councilors in the general elections. The December 2006 elections were held to elect cantonal mayors, members of the District Councils of each of the nation’s districts and intendants of eight special autonomous districts and islands.
Municipal and local elections were held for the first time in Costa Rica on 1 December 2002. This was the first time citizens of the 81 cantons were able to directly choose their mayors as previously the municipal executive was appointed by the city council. A syndic and 4 District Councilors were also elected for each canton’s district as 8 intendants for especial districts with administrative autonomy.
Costa Rica’s municipal system is organized under the Municipal Code, the specific law that regulates the local governments. Municipalities are the second-level administration in Costa Rica after the central government. Each one of the 82 cantons of Costa Rica has a Municipality or Municipal Government constituted by a mayor and a proportional number of members of the Municipal Council. Districts of each of the cantons also have their local authorities and representatives. Some of the services manage by local governments include; solid waste management, building and administration of local roads, parks, libraries and schools, recollection of municipal taxes and in some cases local security. Worth noticing that in Costa Rica city and municipality are not the same thing, as a canton can have several cities within its borders, generally as districts.
21st Century Curridabat is a local political party in Curridabat Canton, Costa Rica. It is considered the most successful local party in the country as all Curridabat mayors have come from the party. The party also often controls the majority of the Municipal Council.
Escazu's Progressive Yoke is a local political party in Escazu Canton, Costa Rica. The party currently holds Escazu's Mayoralty, two out of seven seats in the Cantonal Council and two out of three District Syndics.
The Workers' Party is a far-left Trotskyist political party of Costa Rica. The party was founded on 1 May 2012 on the basis of the student organization Movement toward Socialism led by labor union leader and lawyer Hector Monestel, and currently holds no seats in parliament nor municipal offices. It is a member of the International Workers League – Fourth International. Highly critical of the more moderate Broad Front, it proclaims itself as a "classist and socialist alternative". Internationalism is one of its guidelines and as such it proposes the re-establishment of the Federal Republic of Central America abolished in 1838, reuniting all Central American countries in one single socialist Federation. It also defends feminist, environmentalist and pro-LGBTI ideas.
Head of State elections were held in Costa Rica on 1 January 1829. Juan Mora Fernández was re-elected in his position by the majority of electors. The elections in this period were conducted in two levels, first all Costa Ricans capable of voting according to the Constitution who cast a public vote chose the Electores according to the proportional representation of the population of each location; 11 for San José, 9 for Alajuela, 8 for Cartago, 8 for Heredia, 3 for Escazú, 3 for Ujarrás and 3 for the recently annexed Nicoya. Mora received the unanimous vote of all the provinces except for 2 electoral votes in San José, 1 in Alajuela and 2 in Heredia.
Head of State elections were held in Costa Rica in 1844. They were the first in which direct suffrage was used to elect the Head of State, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of 9 April 1844. A method that was abolished by the next election returning to indirect suffrage until 1913.
The mayoral election of San José of 2002 were the first democratic elections of the modern era to choose the newly created figure of Mayor and two deputy mayors, of the municipality of San José, capital of Costa Rica as with other municipalities. Syndics and District Councilmen were also elected for each of the canton's districts.
The municipal elections of the canton of San José, capital of Costa Rica, of 2006 were held on December 3 of that year. This process was the second occasion in the modern history of the country where elections were held for the election of the capital's mayor. San José, besides being the capital of the country, is the most populated canton.
The San Jose municipal elections of 2010 were held on Sunday December 5 to elect the mayor, deputy mayors, syndics and district councilors of the central canton of San José, capital of Costa Rica. Due to legal reform unifying the municipal elections with those of aldermen, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal decreed that for a single time the authorities elected in these elections would hold office for six years, so the next elections would be in 2016.
Municipal elections were held in Costa Rica on Sunday, February 2, 2020, to elect all municipal offices in the country: mayors, aldermen, syndics, district councilors and the intendants of eight special autonomous districts, together with their respective alternates in all cases. These will be the fifth direct municipal elections since the amendment to the 1998 Municipal Code and the second to be held mid-term since the 2009 reform.
