Bolivia Referendum

MARTIN ALIPAZ/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

With More Than Half of Votes Counted, Morales Still Lags in Bolivia Referendum - With more than half the votes counted Monday in Bolivia, President Evo Morales was trailing badly in a national referendum to allow him to run for re-election for a third time. By nightfall, after a full day of tabulations, Bolivians anxiously awaited results as the president blamed what he said was a dirty social media campaign by his political opponents for the poor showing.

Bolivia’s election agency said that opponents of the president, who hoped for a “Yes” vote to amend the constitution, had a 56% to 44% lead, according to Bolivia’s election agency. Analysts said Monday night that the lead for the “No” vote was insurmountable, though Mr. Morales had not conceded.

“We don’t know exactly what the final difference is going to be, but the ‘No’ is solid, it is going to win,” said Marcelo Varnoux, director of the Bolivian Association of Political Science in La Paz, the capital.

Mr. Morales said that “lies” on social media had hurt him in Sunday’s vote. But he said he wasn't concerned because the ballots from rural areas, where he has traditionally had strong support, had not been counted. “We have to wait with a lot of calm for the results,” said Mr. Morales.

Two quick counts published by Bolivia’s Fides news agency on Sunday, which are based on a sample of votes at polling stations, projected a narrow win for opponents. Pollster Ipsos said 52.3% voted against the referendum and 47.7% were in favor. Pollster Mori said 51% voted against it and 49% were in favor. Fides didn’t provide a margin of error.

Opposition politician Samuel Doria Medina, who finished second against Mr. Morales in the 2014 presidential election, celebrated the results as a victory against an “authoritarian” state.

“The ‘No’ victory is clear and irreversible,” he said. “This is a historic day because Bolivians have said no to a project to have an authoritarian state.”

A defeat for Mr. Morales would be the latest setback for Latin America’s leftist leaders, who have seen their support tumble with the recent economic downturn. In November, conservative businessman Mauricio Macri won Argentina’s presidency, ending 12 years of populist rule. In December, Venezuela’s opposition won a supermajority in Congress, a major loss for President Nicolás Maduro. In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff, who is highly unpopular, is battling opponents who want to impeach her.

Mr. Morales, Latin America’s longest-serving leader and Bolivia’s first indigenous president, sought to change the constitution to allow presidents to serve three consecutive five-year terms, rather than two. A change in the constitution would open the door for him and his vice president, Alvaro García Linera, to stay in office until 2025.

Mr. Morales first took office in 2006, but a Bolivian court ruled that his first term doesn’t count toward his total time in office as it occurred under a different constitution. He is currently in his third term, which is set to expire in 2020.

Analysts had expected Mr. Morales to easily win the vote after calling for the referendum last year. However, corruption allegations against the president and his Movement Toward Socialism party, or MAS, undermined support for the constitutional change in the days before the vote.

Mr. Morales faced accusations of influence peddling when it was revealed that a former girlfriend with whom he had a child is an executive at a China CAMC Engineering Co., a construction company that won more than $500 million in state contracts. Mr. Morales and CAMC denied wrongdoing.

Mr. Morales, 56 years old, said he hadn’t seen the woman since their child died in 2007. But a picture published by Bolivian media showed them together during a Carnival celebration in 2015. Mr. Morales has said he didn’t recognize her.

The government has also been hurt by allegations of widespread corruption at an indigenous development program called Fondo Indigena. The minister of rural development resigned last year after officials were accused of stealing millions of dollars.

“The accusations of corruption and the behavior of the government have created the electoral conditions” for a defeat, said Carlos Cordero, a political scientist at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz.

Mr. Cordero said a loss wouldn’t immediately weaken Mr. Morales, whose party controls Congress. But he said the president’s support could decline in the final year of his term as MAS looks for a successor.

Mr. Morales, who voted in Cochabamba on Sunday, has blamed his right-wing political opponents for the scandal involving his former girlfriend. But he also acknowledged that infighting within MAS and corruption allegations have eroded government support.

“These issues of corruption have affected us,” he said on Sunday in an interview with Spain’s El Pais newspaper.

Mr. Morales, a former coca grower, rose to national prominence in the early 2000s during a period of political instability that included clashes with police trying to control the drug crop and deadly street protests over the privatization of Bolivia’s natural gas. After winning office, he regularly clashed with the U.S., ousting the American ambassador and ending U.S.-backed antidrug policies.

While Mr. Morales expropriated mining and energy assets, he avoided policies enacted by his allies in other South American countries that have suffocated their economies and boosted inflation. As a result, Bolivia’s economy has so far been able to weather the economic downturn better than many of its neighbors. This year, it is expected to grow about 3.5%, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Supporters of the constitutional change point to Bolivia’s strong economic growth during Mr. Morales’s time in office. They also say there are few other politicians who could succeed the popular president.

Luis Gálvez, a 62-year-old taxi driver in Cochabamba, said he supported Mr. Morales despite worries that he’d been in office too long. “There isn’t another leader right now who can convince you to vote for him,” he said.

But many others, like 41-year-old taxi driver Hugo Flores of Cochabamba, said it was time for a change, even if they were generally supportive of Mr. Morales as president.

“He’s tried to do things well, but his followers haven’t,” said Mr. Flores. “They need to be changed.”