Talk:2010 Costa Rican general election

Describing the PLN and other parties
143.89.188.4 has issues with my description of the PLN as "centrist" rather than left-wing, writing "being a member of a socialist international definitely makes it leftist or centre-left. considering that it is in a developing country it can probably be considered leftist." I have to disagree -- many Socialist International member parties are on the centre relative to other political forces in their country. In the case of Costa Rica, and in relative terms only, Acción Ciudadana can certainly be considered to the left of the PLN, whereas Movimiento Libertario and PUSC can be considered to the right.

The best compromise is probably to use the descriptions found on the page Politics_of_Costa_Rica -- that is, social democratic for the PLN, centre-left for the PAC, "libertarian" for PAL, and "Christian democratic" for PUSC.

The other changes I made on 8 Feb, which have also been reverted by 143.89.188.4, dealt mainly with phrasing -- they seemed perfectly innocent changes to me.

The Laura Chinchilla page is overflowing with POV material about one (as far as I know, fairly minor) aspect of her political beliefs -- someone should take a careful look at it...

Ksimons (talk) 23:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd consider PLN to be CR's center-left party, but politics often transcends the simplistic linear paradigm of "left" and "right" and I agree that just "Social Democrat" is best. Notably, the consensus on the Social Democrat page is that "Social democracy is a political ideology of the political left and centre-left on the classic political spectrum," _not_ "centrist" as you say, Ks. (It's also odd, because if indeed some factions of the SI (Socialist Int'l) were considered centrist by expert (and non-POV) sources, I'd have thought that some Wikipedian somewhere by now would be able to find an expert to state that...and yet I don't see the term "centrist" appearing anywhere on the Socialist International webpage (in contrast to various forms of "left" parties). Of course, you're free to look for such an expert's statement, I just have difficulty believing that with the breadth of contributors, no one yet has found such an expert (and non-POV) statement.) Chinchilla's page which described her as far-right on social issues _without_ sources seems to have been resolved; also her views on other issues have been added, but you should realize that: A.) the gay & church-state issues were big in CR recently, garnering up to 1/3rd the Assembly's vote (I wouldn't call that a "minor" issue), and B.) the Laura Chinchilla articles on both es.wikipedia and en.wikipedia were approx 2 sentences before her campaign late last year, and I'm sure her views on a variety of more issues should be expanded, with WP:DUE weight given to each.  As it is, this page (Costa_Rican_general_election,_2010) gives WP:UNDUE weight to the presidential election, but I don't have the Assembly results or other details about Assembly campaigns.216.82.194.76 (talk) 09:50, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Percentages are wrong in the "President election results" section
In the results table, the final lines state:

If 1,824,676 (the total of valid votes) is 100%, then 1,861,031 (total votes) cannot also be 100%. Something is wrong here. --SciCorrector (talk) 17:37, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * This is not wrong. The 100.00% valid votes is there because the candidates's percentages are based on the Valid votes total. Pristino (talk) 10:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)