For eight of the nine presidential candidates, the February 2010 election is no longer about first place. Sure, everyone tries to be number one.
But facing the National Liberation Party (PLN) powerhouse and its candidate, Laura Chinchilla, who has yet to dip below a 10 percent lead in the polls, the top slot seems increasingly out of reach for other candidates.
Most candidates have their sights on second place. Their hope is that Chinchilla will take less than 40 percent of the vote on Feb. 7. According to the election code, this would force the two leading candidates into a run-off.
"For Laura not to come in first, there has to be a disaster in her campaign," said Alberto Cortés, a political science professor at the University of Costa Rica. "When you are speaking about probability, yes, Laura could lose. Anything could happen.
In a second round, the candidate facing Chinchilla would have a better chance of succeeding, not necessarily because of what he represents, but because he's not of the PLN, said political analyst Carlos Denton, co-founder and president of the market research firm CID-Gallup.
According to Denton, the PUSC has historically been successful because the party has been able to unite the opposition to the PLN colossus.
When support in the 2006 election for the PUSC collapsed due to corruption scandals, the newly formed, left-leaning Citizen Action Party (PAC) united the opposition.
Their candidate, Ottón Solís, nearly beat the PLN, unexpectedly coming within two percentage points of Oscar Arias in the general election.
For Denton, Solís' lack of showing in the polls this year is a puzzle. In nearly every poll on the upcoming election, Solís has failed to climb out of the teens.
And at the same time that Solís has yet to stir voter response, Libertarian Movement candidate Otto Guevara has climbed into second place, capturing the support of 30 percent of prospective voters in some polls.
If these studies are accurate – and they all seem to reflect the same thing – more than 65 percent of Costa Ricans are aligning themselves with center to right-of-center candidates.
Cortés questions whether voters are choosing Guevara for his ideology or for his flashy campaign commercials.
Despite the relative absence of the left and the surging presence of the right, Cortés said there are many moving pieces in this election and Costa Rica could still be surprised.