Description of Electoral System

Political Organization: Constitutional and democratic republic consisting of twenty departments.

Form of Government: Presidential.

• National Executive Power: resides with the President of the Republic, whom is both the Chief of State and Head of Government. The President is elected jointly with the Vice President by popular vote for a four-year term and may not serve consecutive terms.
• National Legislative Power: Unicameral legislative power is placed with the Congress of Guatemala, which is comprised by a varying number of representatives (currently there are 158) which serve four-year terms and are eligible for re-election.

Electoral System

The President of the Republic: is elected jointly with the Vice President on the same ballot by popular vote. If neither candidate obtains 50% plus 1 of the votes a runoff election is held between the two candidates that obtained the most votes.

The Congress of the Republic: the Representatives of the Guatemalan Congress are elected trough a proportional representation system occurring at the national and departmental level. At the national level a quarter of the total seats are selected and each department, as well as the capital of the country, forms a district in which one Representative is elected for over 80,000 inhabitants.

Elections in Guatemala are held on the same date for the president and a unicameral legislature.

Recent Elections



Runoff Election, November 4, 2007


The figures were taken from the page of Tribunal Supremo Electoral of Guatemala.

Last September 9, Guatemala carried out presidential and legislative elections. At that election, Colom surpassed his closer contender by four percentage points.

Due to the fact that none of the candidates obtained a majority in the first round, Álvaro Colom and Otto Pérez participated in a second round for the presidency last Sunday.

Once again, more than 5.9 millions of electors had the opportunity to cast their votes during the polling day. However, there was a low turnout with only 2'895,613 votes, being valid 2'743,798 of them.

Álvaro Colom of the National Unity of Hope (UNE) was declared the official victor on Monday with 53% of the valid votes cast.

In light of the results of the second round, it seems that the fact that Álvaro Colom resumed his discourse upon promoting a policy of fighting corruption inside the police forces, as well as promising solutions for the social problems the nation have have to put up for many years, persuaded the electors.

On the other hand, Pérez Molina proposed an "iron fist" policy to strive against impunity and violence in the streets of Guatemala byincreasing the police forces and reinstating the capital punishment.

See the preliminary election results.

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