2006 Costa Rican general election

2006 Costa Rican general election

← 2002 5 February 2006 2010 →
Presidential election
Turnout65.21% (Decrease 3.63pp)
 
Candidate Óscar Arias Ottón Solís Otto Guevara
Party PLN PAC PML
Popular vote 664,551 646,382 137,710
Percentage 40.92% 39.80% 8.76%

Results by canton

President before election

Abel Pacheco
PUSC

Elected President

Óscar Arias
PLN

Legislative election

All 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly
29 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader % Seats +/–
PLN Óscar Arias 36.54 25 +8
PAC Ottón Solís 25.34 14 0
PML Otto Guevara 9.17 6 0
PUSC Ricardo Toledo Carranza 7.82 5 −14
PUN José Manuel Echandi Meza [es] 2.50 1 +1
PREN Carlos Avendaño Calvo 2.04 1 New
PASE Óscar López 1.59 1 New
FA José Merino del Río 1.10 1 New
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Results by province
Óscar Arias

General elections were held in Costa Rica on 5 February 2006. In the presidential election, Óscar Arias of the National Liberation Party (Partido Liberación Nacional), a former president and Nobel Peace Laureate, was victorious over Ottón Solís of the Citizens' Action Party (Partido Acción Ciudadana) 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.

In the parliamentary election, the National Liberation Party won the mosts seats.