most polls but he went second in the first electoral round earning only 29% of the votes, the lowest percentage ever for a PLN’s nominee, and behind PAC’s nominee Luis Guillermo Solís. For the run-off election Araya resign his candidacy arguing that he had no more money to run a campaign and that all polls showed him losing by wide margin. Effectively in the second round Solís won with 78% of the votes (1.3 million voters) and Araya gained only 22%. Araya was expelled from the party after a resolution of the Ethics Committee due to his resignation as candidate in the second round (something unconstitutional, as the Constitution does not allow resigning a candidacy) thus Araya ran for Mayor of San José with a local party winning the election in the 2016 municipal election, in which PLN was the most voted party, yet it lost 14 mayoralties and received much fewer votes that in the previous municipal election. The party, as then main opposition to Luis Guillermo Solís's government, went into a very divisive primary in which then deputy Antonio Álvarez Desanti won over former president José María Figueres. Internal fighting made impossible to reach an agreement among the factions leading to Figueres withdrawing his support of Desanti's nomination. Desanti, who had previously left the party whilst criticizing it for corruption and abandoning its social-democratic ideology, had the support of Oscar Arias and his brother Rodrigo, however. Nevertheless its results in the 2018 Costa Rican general election were crushing, as the party suffered its worst defeat in history with only 18% of votes and failing to gain a spot in the run-off ending as third for the first time in its history. Electoral performance Presidential Parliamentary References External links National liberation movements Political parties in Costa Rica Full member parties of the Socialist International Social democratic parties Political parties established in 1951 1951 establishments in Costa Rica