“I know whose going to win the election. I even know by how much,” he said as he sipped on a large bowl of meat soup. It was October 22nd, 2011; two weeks before the Nicaraguan Presidential elections. By that point, it wasn't surprising to hear someone claim to know who was going to win (most people, even in the opposition, accepted the undeniable popularity of the incumbent, Daniel Ortega), but it was the first time I’d heard a Nicaraguan say that he knew what the actual results would be. “Ortega will win with at least 56% of the vote,” he said with a picaresque smile.
I didn't know this at the time, but my friend hadn't just picked the 56% mark by chance. It was the percentage the Sandinista party needed to achieve an absolute majority in the National Assembly. (Voters were expected to vote for a Presidential candidate and a representative in the Assembly; but it was widely understood that most voters voted strictly down party lines.) My friend was a Sandinista, but a pragmatic one, well aware of the current power dynamics in his country. Another friend, a more devout old-school Sandinista, had, a year earlier, expressed his concerns about the possibility of a landslide Sandinista victory in the Presidential elections: “I’m going to start to worry if Daniel gets more than 60%,” he had said.
