Uruguay's presidential election is too close to call and the result will not be known for several days pending a recount, the South American country’s electoral court said late on Sunday.
“The court is not going to give a winner tonight,” Electoral Court president Jose Arocena told reporters after a night of drama in Montevideo.
The announcement came after unofficial results showed centre-right candidate Luis Lacalle Pou only around 30,000 votes ahead of the ruling party’s Daniel Martinez – turning opinion poll predictions of a comfortable victory on their head.
The court said the number of provisional or contested ballots – around 35,000 – exceeded the margin between the two candidates.
The recount of ballots, which could take two or three days, will begin on Tuesday, meaning the result may not be known before Friday.
Lacalle Pou said he was confident his victory would be confirmed.
Opinion polls since last month’s first-round had indicated that the 46-year-old former senator would comfortably win the run-off.
But with almost all the votes counted, his lead over Martinez, a 62-year-old former Montevideo mayor, was just more than one per cent.
If confirmed, the result would mean defeat for the long-dominant leftist ruling Broad Front coalition after 15 years in power.
“They tried to bury us, but what they didn’t know is that we are seeds,” Martinez told his supporters.
Thousands of flag-waving Lacalle Pou supporters massed around the headquarters of his conservative National Party had earlier been ordered to hold back on celebrations as it became clear the result was on a knife-edge.
“Everybody knows it and they don’t accept it,” Lacalle Pou said when he addressed them after midnight, saying Martinez “has not called me and has not conceded a result that we believe irreversible”.
“Presidente! Presidente!” chanted the crowd regardless.
Officials at the headquarters of the Broad Front, which has won Uruguay’s last three general and presidential elections, were similarly reserved about conceding defeat, sparking celebrations among their supporters.
National Party leader Lacalle Pou, a senator, trailed Martinez in last month’s first round, but a pact with centre-right and right-wing parties following simultaneous legislative elections gave him a majority in Congress as well as a significant lead heading into the run-off.
A win for the right would “reflect a trend in the region of voters rejecting the incumbent party over disappointing results”, said Robert Wood, Latin America specialist with the Economist Intelligence Unit.