Right and left, left and right: in Costa Rica and in the US
You may have noticed a Latin American wave of elections won by politicians on the right. The latest is in Costa Rica:
The rightwing populist Laura Fernández has won Costa Rica’s presidential election in a landslide after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade.
Fernández’s nearest rival, centre-right economist Álvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40% needed to avoid a runoff.
The link is to the leftist Guardian, so it’s hard to know exactly what they mean by “rightwing populist” (Trumpish?) and “centre-right” (Romneyish?). But clearly, Costa Ricans want someone on the right rather than the left. Has the country ever had a leftist government? Yes, and it turned to the right only in 2022. But this recent election is a continuation of that trend.
Fernandez’s inspiration is Bukele of of El Salvador:
The country of 5.2 million people, famous for its white-sand beaches, has long been seen as an oasis of stability and democracy in Central America. But in recent years, it has gone from transit point to logistics hub in the global drug trade.
Drug trafficking by Mexican and Colombian cartels has seeped into local communities, fuelling turf wars that have caused the murder rate to jump 50% in the past six years, to 17 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Fernández cites the iron-fisted Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who has locked up thousands of suspected gang members without charge, as an inspiration on how to tackle crime. Bukele was the first foreign leader to congratulate her.
Fernández’s win confirms a rightward lurch in Latin America, where conservatives have ridden anger towards corruption and crime to win power in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Honduras.
In Argentina at least, it was also economics.
Compare and contrast to this news in the US:
The January New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 32 percent of registered voters believed the country was better off than when Trump returned to office. 49 percent said it was worse. Trump’s approval rating stood at 40 percent, disapproval at 56 percent, and a majority of respondents, 55-42 percent, described his first year as unsuccessful.
These figures were released just days after the White House’s “365 Wins in 365 Days” announcement. They reveal a populace largely unmoved by achievements that objectively transformed policy, economy, and security.
Skepticism of this polling is not misplaced. The New York Times has long demonstrated a pattern of framing narratives through a left-leaning lens. It often underreports Republican accomplishments while amplifying Democratic perspectives. Trump condemned the poll as “fake” and “fraudulent,” denouncing it on Truth Social as a rigged effort to undermine his agenda. He promised to incorporate it into a multibillion-dollar defamation suit against the Times.
It may not be totally accurate, but I don’t think it’s fake. I think it represents something real; some sort of backlash. Look at the results of a recent Fox News poll:
A new Fox News survey, released Thursday, finds the Republican Party is seen as better able to handle border security (by 15 points), national security (+12), and immigration (+5).
The Democratic Party is favored on transgender issues (by 22 points), healthcare (+21), vaccines (+16), helping the middle class (+14), and affordability (+14).
And on three issues where Republicans have recently held the edge, now neither party has shown a clear preference: taxes (+1D), foreign policy (even), and the federal budget deficit (+2R). …
The survey shows if the election were today, 52% of voters would back the Democratic candidate in their House district and 46% the Republican. That’s a 6-point edge, which is right at the poll’s margin of sampling error.
The current 52% Democratic support is the highest recorded for either party; the previous high was 50% for the Democrats in October 2017.
Do people have such short memories of what Democrats do when in office? Do voters require that the current administration fix everything or they turn on it and turn to the opposition, no matter what the record is of the latter? Is it perhaps the dying off of older voters and the ascendance of young voters steeped in leftism?
It was “affordability” that got Mamdani elected. And special elections are not going well for the GOP; for example, this just happened:
Democratic Texas Senate candidate Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss, who President Donald Trump endorsed, 57.21% to 42.79% in the runoff election for the District 9 seat. …
Trump won District 9 by 17 percentage points in 2024. It encompasses Tarrant County and parts of Fort Worth and Arlington.
What gives? I quote two comments to that LI post:
I live in TX Senate 9 district and consider this a major upset. Rehmet aligns 90% with Jasmine Crockett’s positions. His (incessant) mailers seemed all warm and fuzzy, but his positions on his website are pure leftist dogma. Early voting was hampered by the storm last week, but that’s no excuse. We need a nationwide message on the positive economy now through November.
I, too live in this district. The WSJ has a column today about how this vote was all about immigration enforcement. I disagree. I have several friends that typically vote Republican withhold their votes because the disliked the candidate. This was a runoff election and there were two Republican candidates that split the vote. Don’t let the press confuse or discourage you.
Those two GOP candidates ran in November, however. I think that commenter is saying that, because there were two, the worse GOP candidate ended up being the person who ran against Rehmet. But the final result wasn’t even close; you can read more about it here.
I can’t find statistics on turnout, but my guess is that it was fairly low. At any rate, both candidates will be running against each other again in November.
Unless I personally paid for the poll, it’s not trying to tell me what people think, it’s trying to tell me what to think people think. Just a question of how long we want to fall for it I guess.
Legacy media reporting on polls is exactly like legacy media reporting on everything else: they have already chosen the narrative, and they highlight facts that confirm it, and they bury facts that contradict it.
For example, the Fox News poll, I don’t doubt it they got the results they said they did, but once again it’s a registered voter poll and we’ve long known that those are much less accurate than polls of likely voters, and so do people who do polls for a living. If Fox News really wanted a more accurate poll, why didn’t they commission a likely voter poll? Either they didn’t want the accuracy, or didn’t want to spend extra the money.
And the real story of any poll is the weighting:
When they get the weights wrong, they get the poll wrong. Seen this played out over and over.
Niketas:
We can criticize the details of polls. But I’ve noticed they are often good for general trends nonetheless, especially if they point to the same trend. And the off-year election results have been conforming to that same trend, for the most part.
There’s an old saying in adultery situations, to the effect that the spouse shouldn’t try to compete with the lover because they can’t. Because the spouse is a real man or woman with real flaws competing with a fantasy or a hypothetical.
That same dynamic is at play in politics. The party-in-power is always, 100% of the time, unsatisfactory to their supporters. They have to make compromises, both between their own internal factions and the other side. They have to actually deal with circumstances beyond their control on an ongoing basis. The out-party is a hypothetical.
Also, negative emotions are more effective short-term drivers of behavior in human beings than positive. Anger motivates more effectively in the short term than affection, and the out-party is almost always angrier.
So Democrats are highly motivated to turn out, Republicans are currently mixed, not sure if they support the party or not, not satisfied. That’s the default situation for the party-in-power whether it’s Dems or GOP.
It’s worse for the GOP because of the more basic internal divide that has haunted the GOP for the last 50 years. The rank and file Republican voter is a social conservative to one degree or another, a nationalist, a patriot, and (and this is crucial) suspicious of big business and sympathetic to workers/employee concerns.
In short, as J.D. Vance once correctly observed, most Republicans are former Democrats, or people who would have been Democrats if they were born 50 years earlier.
The upper levels of the GOP are privately (and sometimes openly) pro-business (meaning corporate activists), socially liberal, internationalist/globalist, want open borders and amnesty, and very often despise their own voters as dumb hicks or reactionaries.
The goals dearest to the hearts of the GOP elite figures are precisely the ones the GOP base voters are squishiest (at best) on.
This tension emerged in the 1970s when an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party started driving out their own voters, who became the ‘Reagan Democrats’ and later the GOP voting base. But the GOP elite classes detested and despised Reagan. I have heard that when Reagan cinched the nomination in 1980, the party grandees forced him to choose Bush I as his veep with the threat of deliberately throwing the election otherwise. It may or may not be true, but I have no trouble believing it could be true.
When Bush I came to power on the promise of being Reagan III, he immediately started steering the GOP back toward patrician northeastern business agenda sensibilities…and the GOP started losing elections again. Bob Dole let his wife run his campaign, ran on ‘economic conservative social liberal” and lost. Bush II won surprise (if narrow) victories in 2000, 2002, and 2004, in each case on the strength of nationalist and social conservative turnout. Then after 2004 he started trying to implement the stuff his father taught him, and the Dems retook the Congress and the White House in 2006 and 2008. Romney, same story, he ran conservatively in the primaries and then tried to run as John Galt in 2012 and lost to Obama. Jeb Bush infamously said he would have to lose the primary to win the general, meaning that the problem was the GOP base…and Trump eviscerated him in that primary.
The GOP elites hate Trump’s agenda, even when they have to pretend to support it. The voting base perceives that, and they hate the GOP business agenda too, so when Trump himself is not on the ballot, they are often torn between detesting the Democratic candidate and not wanting to vote for their own party because they don’t trust it.
So, the terrain still, even now, favors the Dems, though not nearly as much as it once did.
@neo:But I’ve noticed they are often good for general trends nonetheless, especially if they point to the same trend.
Yes, the trend stories will all agree with each other, which is what I too have noticed, but the explanation for that need not be “the trend is real”.
And the off-year election results have been conforming to that same trend, for the most part.
Have they? Have we actually read about every single off-year election result and have we actually seen that the total experience conforms to that trend, comparing with how well off-year election results conformed to trends in previous years? I’m pretty sure we both know the answer is “no one even tries to do such a comparison”.
No, I’m afraid it’s all narrative and selective citation.
Niketas:
The explanation NEED NOT BE “the trend is real.” Of course; duh. But I’ve noticed in the past it often is. That’s why I take such things seriously.
And yes, I’ve covered the off-year elections. It’s not that they all go against the GOP; certainly not. But all the upsets were Democrat wins in areas Trump had won in 2024; as far as I know there were no GOP-won upsets in Democratic areas. I don’t have a category for “off-year elections 2025,” so it would take me an enormous amount of time to find the posts I wrote on the subject. But I definitely have noticed a great many of them were surprise victories for the Democrat in a place that went GOP in 2024.
And no one above has mentioned that for 10 years now the MSM has beaten the Trump/GOP bad drum continuously. That has to effect the MoR voters. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve watched my BiL go from an apolitical person to rabid Trump hater and is now expanding his ire to the GOP in general. How many more like him? My gut says the Trump renaissance ends this coming November unless mortgage rates are low, gas is low, groceries are down, wages up, and 401ks through the roof, and the economy greatly expanding, and no wars. Tall order.
Trump’s Iran policy has hurt him with his base.
Sennacherib:
And I don’t like what he’s been doing with Iran lately, either; at least, so far.
But I certainly wouldn’t vote for a Democrat because of it. That would be insane. Nor would I stay home and let the Democrat win.
Which part of the Iran policy?
The drop the big m’fen bombs on their buried nuclear weapons facilities?
Or the current jaw-jaw before the boom, boom mullahs?
It appears Tucker didn’t like the bombing of the nukes and won’t like the mullahs getting their hair mussed. Don’t confuse Tucker with Trump’s base.
No, it hasn’t.
The part of the MAGA base who really are ‘bring the troops home and ignore reality’ is tiny. Tucker Carlson, Don Surber, etc. are preaching to a tiny choir. Many people want less foreign involvement, but they aren’t insane about it, and they know Iran is an enemy of the USA.
That said, I can understand why you would think that, the Democrats and the Democratic press organs are trying desperately to spin that message.
In reality, Trump has bothered his real base more with his equivocation on H1B and H1C visas.
om:
I’m talking about the threats to the regime without follow-up, that are more recent. It remains to be seen what will ultimately happen, but so far it looks like a bluff.
Unlike Carlson et al, I approved of the Iran strikes last summer.
Affordability. What is it? It’s generally having enough income to pay your monthly bills and have a little left over to put in savings/investments. It’s a feeling that your financial situation is likely to improve with time and hard work.
Right now, Trump’s policies have things headed in the right direction – lower energy prices, more jobs, improving wages, etc. But there are sticky prices that will be slow to come down. Such as auto insurance home insurance, health insurance, utilities, property taxes, and other government fees. (My city has raised our sewer fees by 27% and is asking for a 20% increase in property taxes. 🙁 )
Being on a relatively fixed retirement income over the years, I have usually had enough income to pay bills and have bit left over each month. In 2021 that changed. I was taking money out of savings to pay bills. That’s tapered off now to where I’m close to breaking even, but not back where I was in 2020.
I recognize that Trump’s policies are going to further blunt inflation and create more economic activity. Most people will participate, but the results may not be felt before the mid-terms. And that could hurt the GOP.
I think the GOP message has to be that they recognize that things are still tough, and that it will take more time for all the pro-growth policies to kick in so that people will feel less economic angst. Be honest, acknowledge that things are still too pricy but show how things will change going forward.
“Rightward lurch”
Conservatives lurch and pounce, unlike those nice thoughtful liberals.
I have got to question Democrats leading Republicans on transgender issues of all things. If there is any issue where Republicans are on the right side of an 80-20 split this it. The special election result is worrying though regardless of underlying local cause.
JJ said:
“I think the GOP message has to be that they recognize that things are still tough, and that it will take more time for all the pro-growth policies to kick in so that people will feel less economic angst. Be honest, acknowledge that things are still too pricey but show how things will change going forward.”
Saying such will not convince anyone, even if true. In fact it can hurt the GOP to actually tell people to “just hang in there!” Too many times have people heard such from politicians. As I said, if the economy and people’s wallets are good in September, then all will be fine. If not, expect Trump et al to be impeached come January ’27. Actions not words are going to carry the MotR voters.
@neo: I’ve covered the off-year elections…. But I definitely have noticed a great many of them were surprise victories for the Democrat in a place that went GOP in 2024.
Have we actually read about every single off-year election result and have we actually seen that the total experience conforms to that trend, comparing with how well off-year election results conformed to trends in previous years?
We both know the answer is “no one even tries to do such a comparison”. The thing that you have done is not that, and I appreciate that it was a lot of work for you to do it, but it was not that thing.
There’s two questions that always need to be answered to get at the truth of this, and neither of them are ever quantitatively answered:
1) How well do off-year election trends correlate with the big elections we actually care about;
2) Are the off-year election results we talk about this year actually being fairly characterized, and not cherry-picked for the narrative?
We already know how poor registered-voter polls are, so the only reason anyone reports on them is for narrative. I don’t think it makes much sense to continue to pay attention to such polls.
The dealer at three-card monte only lets you pick the queen when it benefits him. Legacy media reporting on polls is every bit as rigged as three-card monte.
I belabor this because accepting a narrative tends to be a self-reinforcing thing. Look at what’s happened with Epstein.
“Actions not words are going to carry the MotR voters.” – physicsguy
I believe you’re probably correct. However, when Trump goes son one of his rants about how he’s broken inflation and gas and egg prices are down, he is sounding like everything is okay. We Joe Sixpaks know it’s not true and it makes me cringe when he says things like that. Has he bought a beef steak recently? He doesn’t have to pay his insurance and tax bills, so he doesn’t realize that those are not down and not coming down for a while.
I know most LIVs have no idea about the economics and only want results NOW! That being the case, I see no way for the GOP to win in November. I still prefer that my pols tell the truth. I know, H*ll will freeze over when that happens.
I agree with HC68 that the America Only part of the MAGA base is the small, but vocal part. the America First part accepts the strategic use of the military that doesn’t end with nation building.
A change of government from a terror-exporting, destabilizing force to a neutral/western aligned government is in our America First interests.
The US spends $60-$80 billion a year providing security to the region, (our security umbrella extends are beyond Israel)
If the region were stable with a western aligned government, the savings could be $20-$50 billion annually, with a reduced military presence. We will always have a presence, since the region is so vital to our economic and military interests.
With the President’s actions in Venezuela, increased exports from this country and with a neutral/western friendly Iran could realistically see global oil prices drop $10 or more.
Lower oil prices (from stable Iran supply) could add $100–200 billion in consumer/business gains annually, boosting GDP by 0.5–1%.
Lower oil prices would deprive Russia from oil revenues forcing it to accept a peace treaty that would ensure the long term survival/safety of Ukraine.
It would reduce China’s need to purchase discounted, sanctioned oil and while slightly raising China’s costs slightly, would ensure them a steady supply of oil and reduce tensions between the US and China in this area.
I agree with neo that it’s worthwhile to note trends in polls. And that Fox poll was disappointing.
However, we are living in such a volatile time, it’s hard to say what will drive votes in the midterms next year.
__________________________
Events, my dear boy, events.
— attributed to Harold Macmillan
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But one thing’s for sure, the Trump administration had better keep its eye on the economy and kitchen table issues.
The influence of the MSM and its co-conspirators cannot be underestimated. While fewer and fewer people are getting news solely from the traditional sources like TV and newspapers, those sources have devolved into pure propaganda. They don’t have a slant or a bias, they are fully committed to Orwellian levels of lying and manipulation. Social media is now doing the same job, and it’s proving to be very effective, and probably has more influence than all traditional media combined.
In the so-called Information Age, people are _less_ informed than ever. The MSM (as described above, including social media) lays out a narrative and all their worker bees hammer it every chance they get.
COVID showed us the absolute corruption and incompetence in every single “official” institution from the government, the medical industry, and the media, and yet so many people are deeply invested in what I can only see as the cargo cult of vaccines (I’m not saying all vaccines are bogus or should be avoided, just that we should be deeply skeptical of them. Even the polio vaccine, something no one would argue with, gave 40,000 people polio in the early days due to a bad batch.) Now the entire country is flocking to GLP-1 meds, even though they are really dangerous, and currently embroiled in lawsuits by thousands of injured people (or on behalf of people who have died).
I can’t understand why the Trump Administration continues to allow pharmaceutical advertising on TV and elsewhere. It’s insane that pharma has so much control over the media and is one of the main ways that the COVID “vaccine” was able to be forced on people in the first place. And it doesn’t help that the completely incompetent Pam Bondi is in Pfizer’s pocket.
Trump is committing a lot of unforced errors right now, with its handling of the ICE issues in Minnesota leading the pack. Alex Pretti is seen as some kind of working-class hero and not the thug and idiot he actually was. The left is pushing hard, hoping for more martyrs, which they will use for their advantage, and it’s working. No one cares about the hundreds of people murdered by illegals, and yet they will riot over some indoctrinated clod who doesn’t have the common sense of a cabbage.
I feel like Trump is losing in media far worse than he has to be. He needs to spend less time saying stupid stuff because someone gets under his skin, and more time saying smart stuff and then doing it, something he’s done plenty of so far. He needs to fire and replace some of his cabinet (Bondi, Noem, maybe even Patel), who seem to have been chosen more for loyalty to him than an ability to do the job. I can’t stop asking myself, why did Bongino quit?
Oh, well, I need to cut this disjointed rant short and get to work.
Rick Gutleber,
Maybe it’s this very prolonged, and record breaking cold here in Florida getting to me, but I share your pessimism at present. Trump needs to give as much energy to domestic issues as he is giving to foreign affairs. Both are important, but his neglect of the home is going to be his downfall if he doesn’t pivot soon.
With a return to near average temperatures here, perhaps I’ll take on a more positive outlook. The left really has infinite energy that eventually beats one down.
Rick Gutleber wrote “I feel like Trump is losing in media far worse than he has to be.”
The Democrat media will never give Trump a fair shake. He needs to convince the voters by addressing them directly, and through his actions, that he is governing with common sense for the country’s benefit.
“Trump needs to give as much energy to domestic issues as he is giving to foreign affairs.” – physicsguy
The policies President Trump is tackling in foreign policy are intertwined is/will have a large impact in domestic policy.
Trump’s immigration policy of shutting down the border, deportations and interdicting drug importation in the gulf has produced amazing gains in deaths, both drug and violent crime.
Yes, homicide rates were trending down, but the President’s efforts are remarkable.
Venezuela is a larger project. Prevent China from establishing a base for power projection, increasing oil production that is no longer sanctioned, willingness to go after drug cartels, and encouraging more US aligned governments in Latin and South America.
Iran would be the crown jewel. Helping Iran move from a hostile regional power to a western friendly government would have significant benefits to the US and the region.
If the US could remove sanctions and encourage Iran to maximum oil production, the increased production both in Iran and Venezuela (less impact from Venezuela in the short term) we could see a significant drop in global oil prices.
Yes, an incredible number of factors would have to fall for this scenario to play out in time to affect the 2026 election– first being the fall of the Islamic Republic with a stable government still in place.
But the first incredible factor fell when Maduro was arrested. Many more to come.
But this shows that President Trump sees the benefit to the US in his foreign policy agenda.
— physicsguy
Doing what exactly?
The truth is that Presidents have only limited power in domestic affairs. Anything Trump can do in domestic affairs the left press will treat the same way they treat Minnesota. Trump could try harder to reach the public with his successes, but in general, only those who already lean his way will hear the message, just as the opposition mostly hears only the lefty media.
What the public really wants, when they talk about affordability, is for prices to come back down to pre-covid levels. Which will not happen bar a deflation spiral, which would be vastly worse.
The same thing happened after the inflation of the 1970s. People who were old enough to remember the prices before it never did entirely adjust to the change, even after wages caught up. It was a perpetual irritant for them, just as this inflation cycle will be for people now. After a while wages caught up and relative prices fell for some things after the 1970s, and the irritation became manageable, but it never completely went away for that generation.
Gasoline is a good example. Adjusted for inflation, gasoline has cost 2 bucks a gallon, more or less, throughout most of the automative age. But in absolute terms it went from 29 cents a gallon to way over a dollar a gallon in a relatively short time…and people who were adults then never did entirely stop resenting it, even if they knew intellectually that their wages had also increased.
There’s nothing Trump can do to alter that fundamental source of discontent. There’s nothing any President can do about that. His immigration policies will, over time, force wages up, but that won’t happen overnight.
So, he’ll just have to do the best he can with what he has.
I’m not convinced his message is doing as badly as the press wants us to think, either. A lot of our impression of how badly he’s supposedly being perceived is itself a media artifact of his opposition.
How do we know that Trump already isn’t giving as much energy to domestic issues as to foreign affairs? We see through a filter of legacy media with an additional imposed filter of blogs and algorithms.
Sometimes we have no idea what Trump is doing until the thing has already happened. Two examples: the strike on Iran’s nuclear program and the extraction of Maduro from Venezuela. Neither of those were decided or prepared the day before they happened, they each took weeks or months, and we were all surprised.
”Neither of those were decided or prepared the day before they happened, they each took weeks or months, and we were all surprised.”
“What do you mean ‘we’ Kemosabe?” Some of us who follow these things watched them unfold almost in real time.