2010 Costa Rican General Election

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.

2010 Costa Rican general election

← 2006 7 February 2010 2014 →
Presidential election
Turnout	69.12%
Candidate Laura Chinchilla Ottón Solís Fallas Otto Guevara Guth Party PLN PAC PML Running mate Alfio Piva Luis Liberman Mónica Segnini Julio Humphreys Mario Quirós Lorena San Román Popular vote 896,516 478,877 399,788 Percentage 46.91% 25.05% 20.92%
Results by canton
President before election Oscar Arias PLN Elected President Laura Chinchilla PLN
Legislative election
All 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly 29 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader % Seats +/– PLN Laura Chinchilla Miranda 37.27 24 −1 PAC Ottón Solís Fallas 17.61 11 −6 PML Otto Guevara Guth 14.50 9 +3 PASE Óscar Andrés López Arias 9.05 4 +3 PUSC Luis Fishman Zonzinski 8.16 6 +1 PRC Mayra González León 3.85 1 +1 FA Eugenio Trejos Benavides 3.63 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

The election was supervised by observers from several countries, as well as from the Organization of American States. The incumbent president, Óscar Arias, was ineligible to run for a second consecutive term. This was the last time as of 2019, that the National Liberation Party has gotten more than 30% of the vote, the last time to this date that they have won the presidency, and the last time it has won any province in what is known as the Central Valley (the four provinces in the interior of the country: San José, Alajuela, Heredia and Cartago).

Candidates included:

• Laura Chinchilla Miranda (ruling National Liberation Party, vice-president 2006–08)
• Ottón Solís (oppositional Citizens' Action Party, candidate in 2006)
• Otto Guevara (Movimiento Libertario, candidate in 2006)
• Luis Fishman (conservative Social Christian Unity Party, vice-president under Abel Pacheco)

Two weeks before the election, Patriotic Alliance and National Integration Party's candidates, Rolando Araya and Walter Muñoz, stopped their campaigns and endorsed Citizens' Action Party's candidate Otton Solís, in an effort to build a progressive alliance against Laura Chinchilla.

The swifting from a two-party system to a multi-party system was much more evident in this election

For the then three major parties; PLN, PAC and ML the voting for the presidential ballot was superior to the support in the legislative, as for example PLN presidential candidate Laura Chinchilla received 46% of the votes and PLN's legislative ballot only 37%. Similarly PAC's candidate Ottón Solís with 25% presidential against 17% legislative and Otto Guevara with 20% oppose to 14% legislative. Contrary to PUSC whose candidate Luis Fishman received 3% electoral support while his party received 8%.

This was at the time PAC's worst electoral result in its history having the smallest faction in the Parliament and ML's best result with to this date its biggest. PLN only lost one seat. Left-wing Broad Front maintained its only seat in the person of future presidential nominee José María Villalta Florez-Estrada and two Christian parties for the first time had deputies at the same time; Costa Rican Renewal Party and its provincial offshoot National Restoration.

• CID-Gallup 24 January 2010: Chinchilla 43%; Guevara 30%; Solís 15%; Fishman 8%
• Borge & Asociados for Diario Extra opinion poll January 2010: Chinchilla 38.7%; Guevara 18.3%; Solís 9.6%; Fishman 3.7%
• Demoscopía for Al Día January 2010: Chinchilla 45.1%; Guevara 30.1%; Solís 9.5%; Fishman 3.8%
• December 2009: Chinchilla 36.7%; Guevara 16.2%; Solís 8.5%; Fishman 2.2%
• December 2009: Chinchilla 46.6%; Guevara 19.5%; Solís 8.3%; Fishman 4.1%
• October 2009: Chinchilla 53.0%; Guevara 15.7%; Solís 12.3%; Fishman 1.5%

President

At 9:08 p.m. local time on election day, 7 February second-placed candidate Otton Solis conceded defeat to Laura Chinchilla, who will become Costa Rica's first female president. With approximately 40% of the vote counted, Chinchilla was consistently surpassing the 40% threshold for victory in the first round, leading Solis by 47% to 24%, with third-placed candidate Otto Guevara trailing at 21.5%.

By province

Province %	PLN %	PAC %	ML %	PUSC %	PASE %	PRC %	Other %
San José	46.6	28.9	17.6	3.6	2.1	0.6	0.6
Alajuela	45.3	26.5	21.9	3.2	1.8	0.8	0.5
Cartago	49.7	23.5	19.4	4.2	2.1	0.4	0.7
Heredia	46.6	27.6	19.5	3.2	1.8	0.6	0.7
Puntarenas	48.9	17.3	26.7	4.4	1.3	0.8	0.6
Limón	41.6	17.5	31.4	5.0	1.7	1.9	0.9
Guanacaste	51.4	15.9	23.3	6.1	1.6	1.2	0.6
Total	46.8	25.1	20.9	3.9	1.9	0.7	0.8

Legislative Assembly

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	National Liberation Party	708,043	37.27	24	–1
	Citizens' Action Party	334,636	17.61	11	–6
	Libertarian Movement	275,518	14.50	9	+3
	Accessibility without Exclusion	171,858	9.05	4	+3
	Social Christian Unity Party	155,047	8.16	6	+1
	Costa Rican Renewal Party	73,150	3.85	1	+1
	Broad Front	68,987	3.63	1	0
	National Restoration Party	29,530	1.55	1	0
	Patriotic Alliance	28,349	1.49	0	New
	National Integration Party	14,643	0.77	0	0
	Cartago Agrarian Union Party	11,862	0.62	0	0
	Heredia Restoration Party	7,953	0.42	0	New
	Alajuela Restoration Party	7,298	0.38	0	New
	Cartaginese Transparency Party	4,590	0.24	0	New
	Green Ecologist Party	2,901	0.15	0	New
	Elderly Alliance Party	2,724	0.14	0	New
	Alajuelan Familiar Force Party	1,609	0.08	0	New
	Workers' and Farmers' Movement	1,127	0.06	0	New
Total		1,899,825	100.00	57	0
Valid votes		1,899,825	97.39
Invalid votes		30,806	1.58
Blank votes		20,077	1.03
Total votes		1,950,708	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		2,822,491	69.11
Source: Election Resources

By province

Province	PLN		PAC		ML		PUSC		PASE		PRC		FA		PREN		AP		Other
	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S
San José	35.5	7	19.0	4	12.3	2	7.4	2	11.1	2	3.0	1	4.7	1	4.3	1	1.1	0	1.6	0
Alajuela	38.2	5	19.9	2	16.5	2	6.5	1	8.5	1	6.5	0	1.3	0	2.0	0	1.9	0	0.8	0
Cartago	38.9	3	17.0	1	13.1	1	7.6	1	7.9	1	2.8	0	2.8	0	-	0	1.2	0	8.5	0
Heredia	37.0	2	19.1	2	13.9	1	7.3	0	8.7	0	2.9	0	4.8	0	4.0	0	1.9	0	0.5	0
Puntarenas	39.7	2	14.3	1	18.6	1	13.8	1	5.1	0	4.3	0	2.2	0	-	0	1.1	0	1.0	0
Limón	33.3	2	12.0	1	20.1	1	10.2	1	5.6	0	8.6	0	7.3	0	-	0	1.2	0	1.8	0
Guanacaste	43.1	3	11.6	0	13.5	1	11.0	0	10.0	0	5.1	0	2.2	0	-	0	3.1	0	0.3	0
Total	37.3	24	17.6	11	14.5	9	8.2	6	9.0	4	3.9	1	3.6	1	2.4	1	1.5	0	2.0	0

Municipal Councils

The elections of municipal councilors of Costa Rica in 2010 were an electoral process held in parallel with the presidential and legislative elections. In them the 495 tenure aldermen and the 495 alternates that conform the 81 Municipal Councils were chosen.

The Central Canton of San José, the most populous, named 13 aldermen. Desamparados and Alajuela named 11. Others less populated (Puntarenas, Limón, Pococí, Heredia, Cartago, La Unión, San Carlos, Goicoechea, Pérez Zeledón, etc.) named 9. Others even smaller (Tibás, Grecia, Vázquez de Coronado, Montes de Oca, Siquirres, Escazú, Turrialba, etc.) appointed 7 council members. Finally, the smallest (Turrubares, San Mateo, Santa Ana, Mora, Montes de Oro, Talamanca, etc.) named 5.