The 2021 Bolivian regional elections were held on 7 March 2021. Departmental and municipal authorities were elected by an electorate of approximately 7 million people. This was the third regional election under the 2009 constitution. It was postponed from the expected date of 2020 due to the 2019 Bolivian political crisis and delays in holding the 2020 Bolivian general election. All elected authorities assumed office on 3 May.
Process and schedule Regional elections were originally meant to be held in 2020 but were delayed due to the 2019 political crisis and the subsequent scheduling of new presidential elections which in turn were delayed from May to October 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 10 November, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) put out the call for regional elections to be held on 7 March 2021. Given the closeness of the October general elections and the March subnational elections, Bolivia was the first country in the world to organize two national elections in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Among the officials to be elected were:
Governors of all nine departments Vice governors of Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Pando departments Members of departmental legislative assemblies in each department; 25 seats in these Assemblies will represent minority indigenous communities, and have been selected by traditional usos y costumbres in the weeks prior to the election Mayors and Council members in 336 municipalities Provincial subgovernors and municipal corregidors (executive authorities) in Beni The regional executive, development executives, and nine members of the regional assembly in the autonomous region of Gran Chaco
Altogether, 4,352 municipal officials, 583 departmental officials, and 27 regional officials were elected. Almost every elected office, but not mayor, included a simultaneously elected alternate (suplente) of the same party.
On 24 December, parties presented their political alliances to the TSE and on 28 December candidates were registered. 121 political organizations registered 20,337 candidates for the election, including 11,173 candidates for office and 9,164 alternates. The official campaigning season began on 7 December and ended on 3 March, four days before voting began.
A runoff system was also in place in the case of governors but not mayors. Any candidate who won 50% of the vote or who reached 40% with a difference of at least 10% in relation to the second most voted candidate would be proclaimed the winner. If no candidate reached this threshold, a runoff between the top two candidates would occur on 11 April. In the event of no second round, authorities would take office between 30 and 31 March and in the event of a runoff, authorities would take office between 3 and 5 May. However, the President of the TSE Salvador Romero later reported that all winning candidates would take office on 3 May in order to avoid difficulties surrounding differences in term-lengths between municipal and departmental authorities in the 2026 regional elections.
Voting is compulsory in Bolivia. For three months after elections, those without suffrage certificates showing proof of voting are barred from bank procedures, attaining a passport, among others. However, due to concerns regarding COVID-19, on 3 March the TSE provided an exception to this rule for citizens 60 years old and above.
Conduct on election day As with previous elections, delegates of the Organization of American States (OAS) were sent as observers to the subnationals. In keeping with MAS criticisms of the OAS, President Luis Arce announced that he would not attend any events where the OAS was present due to their "nefarious" role in the 2019 election. This included the voting day opening ceremony at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. He stated that he would instead wait for the results at his home and would then evaluate them at the Casa Grande del Pueblo, the government palace.
The TSE reported that the majority of polling locations opened within a timely manner with a few isolated incidents in which they did not open at 8 a.m due to the absence of jurors. According to TSE guidelines, voting could not commence unless there were at least 3 electoral jurors overseeing voting. In the absence of such jurors, the Electoral Notary could appoint the number required from among Bolivians who were registered and present at that polling site. A total of 208,554 jurors had been chosen by the TSE prior to the elections.
In the indigenous community of Florida in the Pando Department, the election date was postponed to 21 March due to heavy rainfall which caused technical difficulties the day before the elections.
Political parties and candidates Movement for Socialism For the nationally governing Movement for Socialism (MAS–IPSP), the subnational elections confronted the party with the challenge of consolidating regional power following the 2019 political crisis. While President Luis Arce had won a one round victory of 55.10% the previous year, it was notably less than the 61.36% mandate given to Evo Morales the year before the 2015 regional elections, and despite holding governors in six of the nine departments, none of the incumbents elected in 2015 still held their seats, with interim governors taking their place as a result of the 2019 crisis. Perhaps the biggest dilemma facing MAS was the continued role of Morales within the party who returned to the country in 2020 after a year of exile in Argentina. While Morales remained the national chief of MAS, early indications showed that the influence of the former president over the party had declined. Candidates endorsed by Morales in numerous departments were not chosen by the regional wings of MAS. In other departments, regional MAS assemblies proclaimed their candidates before Morales had the opportunity to arrive.
Morales' frequent interference ultimately resulted in the so-called silletazo on 14 December 2020. The situation arose when the popular Mario Cronenbold was replaced as the party's candidate for Governor of Santa Cruz by Morales' former government minister Carlos Romero. Public outcry by the meeting's participants led to one person throwing and hitting Morales with a plastic chair. The silletazo was met by various reactions within and outside of the party. Opposition community leader Rafael Quispe stated that the event was a sign that Morales had "finished his cycle and ... should go home", while the MAS-aligned Segundina Flores of the Bartolina Sisa Confederation affirmed that while Morales "deserves respect" he should not be selecting candidates by the pointing of a finger. Many anti and pro-MAS individuals expressed their discontent at Morales' "dedazo" (Point of a finger appointments of candidates) and younger MAS militants made demands of "renovation" within the party.
The hands-on participation of Morales in the numerous MAS campaigns contrasted with what political analyst Marcelo Arequipa described as the "neutral actor" of President Luis Arce. Arequipa described Arce as a "managing president" who "presents himself as someone who does not care about the internal political dispute of the MAS, what interests him is to govern ... and carry out a more or less clean political and economic management." While Arce upheld the MAS claim that the 2019 crisis was a coup d'état, he maintained a relatively neutral stance towards the regional elections, and according to the MAS Senator Luis Adolfo Flores, "I have not seen the president in a political campaign." In this way, while Morales handled the regional campaigns on the ground, Arce focused on his national agenda and, as Morales appointed many of the candidates, he would be thus responsible for any eventual losses.
MAS was the only party to present candidacies in all 336 municipal contests, was unopposed in 28 municipalities, and faced only a single opponent in 65 more municipalities. Despite this, internal disagreements and disputes weakened the blue party within some of its historical bases of support. Perhaps the greatest example was in El Alto, the historic center of MAS support, where the popular former president of the senate Eva Copa was expelled from the party. This due to the fact that she presented herself as El Alto's mayoral candidate for the Jallalla La Paz group after not being nominated as the MAS candidate. Support for her often gave her a 70% lead in national polls, far above the MAS candidate. Similar situations in which the individual or individuals preferred by regional MAS sectors weren't chosen as the party's candidate occurred in many other major departments and municipalities. According to Morales, "The MAS–IPSP will not make party alliances and will maintain its identity. Our alliance is only with social movements and society."
Opposition While the conflicts within MAS between the old guard and those looking for new leadership did weaken the party, the opposition also failed to consolidate into a unified front for the subnational elections. Among the opposition parties, a total of thirty-nine political alliances had been formed with twenty-nine registered with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the rest registered with departmental agencies. Marcelo Arequipa state that "MAS is the only party that has a national structure, the rest of the political organizations do not necessarily have no structure, but rather have no intention of expanding territorially, they are confined to those spaces where they believe they are stronger."
On a national level, the opposition was fragmented between a total of five major factions. The largest was Civic Community (CC) formed in 2018 by former president Carlos Mesa composed and led on a national level by the Revolutionary Left Front (FRI). Another rising faction was Luis Fernando Camacho's Creemos alliance which despite only being formed in 2020 received third place and won the Santa Cruz Department in that year's general election. Maintaining their presence were the traditional anti-MAS groups of the Morales era, the Democrat Social Movement (MDS) of Santa Cruz governor Rubén Costas and the National Unity Front (UN) of businessman Samuel Doria Medina. Another newly formed group was the Third System Movement (Movimiento Tercer Sistema, MTS) of La Paz Department governor Félix Patzi who formed the party in 2018.
While the opposition field was crowded and divided, the numerous groups were able to form numerous department-level alliances with regional parties as well as each other. The largest united front for the opposition was in Santa Cruz, the longtime anti-MAS base of support. Here, the major groups threw their support behind Luis Fernando Camacho's gubernatorial bid. On the other hand, all five major factions were among 13 other parties contesting the La Paz governorship. The remaining minor parties, while presenting their own candidates on both a municipal and departmental level, also formed coalitions amongst themselves and the large factions. Parties like the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) made alliances with both the Democrats and UN as well as presented their own candidates by department. Some regional parties such as Together for the Call of the Peoples (Juntos al Llamado de los Pueblos, Jallalla) in La Paz and Join (Súmate) in Cochabamba also performed well on their own without aligning themselves with national parties and alliances.
Nationally certified parties and alliances