LatinNews Daily Report - 09 May 2012

Dominican Republic| More polls predict a Medina first round win. On 8 May at least two more polls, found that the presidential candidate of the ruling Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD), Danilo Medina, is set to capture over 50% of the vote in the upcoming 20 May presidential election. This means that, with a little over a week left before the vote, Medina could be the outright winner in the first round. Pollsters Insight, and Penn, Shoen & Berland put voting intentions for Medina at 52.4% and 51% respectively. In addition, both polls found that the majority of respondents (73.5% and 81% respectively) believe that the election will be won in the first round. However, Medina’s closest adversary, the candidate for the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), Hipólito Mejía, has dismissed all the polls that put Medina in the lead and maintains that he has up to an eight point lead over him. According to Mejía, whose voting intentions are put at 46% by Penn, Shoen & Berland, and at 43.3% by Insight, this lead will materialise on election day; he said all the polls are “mere publications”. Former president Mejía (2000-2004) captured 49.87% of the vote in the 2000 election and was set to go into a run-off with Medina, who received 24.9% of the vote, before the latter decided to pull out of the race, believing he had no chance of closing the large gap in the second round.

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