Uruguay presidential election heads to runoff with center-left candidate in lead

Uruguay is heading for a tight presidential election runoff next month after a center-left candidate came out ahead of two candidates who split the conservative vote in Sunday’s first round.

Voters also rejected a controversial pension reform plan in one of two plebiscites.

Official results showed center-left Yamandú Orsi – a two-time mayor and former history teacher – with some 1.06m votes, ahead of the ruling conservative coalition’s candidate, Álvaro Delgado, who received 644,147 votes. In third place with 385,685 votes was Andrés Ojeda, who has pledged to back Delgado.

The 24 November runoff vote will take place because no candidate got more than 50% of the first-round vote.

The country of just 3.4 million people is known for its generally moderate politics, without the sharp right-left divides seen elsewhere in the region.

Related: High-stakes pension plebiscite could turn Uruguay’s election in to its ‘Brexit moment’

“We are going in for these 27 days,” Orsi told thousands of energized supporters waving flags and setting off flares in Montevideo late on Sunday. “The Broad Front is once again the most voted party in Uruguay.”

Delgado also struck a confident tone, saying he had the team to win the runoff and adding that Uruguayans now faced a binary choice between the two remaining candidates.

Supporters of Orsi’s Broad Front were generally buoyant, but noted the second round would be a tough contest given the combined conservative vote.

“A return of the Broad Front would mean a new cycle of renovation, progressive proposals ensuring economic growth, with better wealth distribution,” said 53-year-old Orsi backer Gabriela Balverde.

Uruguayans also voted down two binding plebiscites. The key one on pension reforms would have lowered the retirement age by five years to 60 and increased payouts. The other regarded boosting police powers to fight drug-related crime.

The prospect of a change to the country’s $22.5bn private pension system had dragged on local markets in recent months and prompted jitters among investors and politicians.

The proposal was to scrap private pension schemes and shift to a public model, which analysts say would put a bigger debt burden on the state, create legal complexities around transferring pension funds, and put Uruguay’s investment-grade credit rating at risk.

In Treinta y Tres, a rural region of eastern Uruguay that has traditionally voted conservative, the 60-year-old farm worker Ramon Silveira, said he had cast his ballot for the continuity candidate Delgado, favoring stability over change.

“I want the trend of the last five years to continue.”

Miguel Ángel Chirivao, 71, meanwhile, voted for Orsi’s Broad Front bloc, but was concerned the victory was narrower than hoped for and that could hurt the left in the second round.

“They had a poorer result than we expected,” he said.