Colorado Party (Uruguay)

The Colorado Party (Spanish: Partido Colorado, lit. 'Red Party', PC) is a liberal political party in Uruguay.
Its existence can be traced back to the origins of the Uruguayan republic, in the 1830s, and since then until the late 1990s it remained the most dominant political party in the country, holding power almost uninterruptedly (alternating with the National Party, its greatest rival) until its electoral collapse in the 2004 elections, when the Party obtained only 10% of the vote. Since then, the Colorados have been able to recuperate some of their lost support, but as of 2024 they haven’t reached the 20% threshold in any of the elections celebrated in that period (2009, 2014, 2019, 2024).
Their current position in the Uruguayan political landscape is conditioned by the unofficial coalition they’ve formed with the National Party (Partido Nacional; another center-right political party, traditionally the Colorado’s greatest adversary), in opposition to the Broad Front (Frente Amplio). The Front is a leftist coalition formed in the early 1970s that has become, since the 1999 election, the most-voted electoral force in the country, reshaping Uruguayan electoral politics and displacing the Colorado Party from its traditional position of dominance to becoming the third party in the country, behind the National Party.
During the first third of the 20th century, and under the stewardship and legacy of José Batlle y Ordóñez (1856-1929), the largest sectors of the Colorado Party stood for a radical agenda of social reform, including the promotion of workers’ rights, women’s rights, statism and the ample provision of public services, democratic political reform and regular use of direct democracy mechanisms, secularization, and the establishment of a generous welfare state. During the 1940s and 1950s, led by Luis Batlle Berres (nephew of José Batlle) this Batllista wing of the Colorado Party stood also for state-led industrialization efforts and an economic dirigiste regime. In the late 1960s, though, the Party began to abandon the most radical part of that social agenda (as well as the dirigiste approach to economic matters) and now stands in the center, center-right of the Uruguayan political spectrum. Current high-profile personalities from the Party include Andrés Ojeda and Pedro Bordaberry.
The party seeks to unite moderate and liberal groups, although its members have had a diverse set of ideologies since its foundation, including Krausism and liberal conservatism, as well as general pragmatism. It was the dominant party of government almost without exception during the stabilization of the Uruguayan republic.
The Colorado Party has traditionally been an ideologically diverse party, with one study from the 1950s noting that "the liberal ideological position assumed by the Colorado. a half-century ago under the drive of Batlle has forced the Blancos or Nationalists to become more relatively conservative in position. On the part of both major parties, however, many inconsistencies and many ideological subdivisions, temporary or permanent, occur. Each of the large parties has its conservatives and its liberals, and party lines are often difficult to hold in congressional debate.”
At the 2004 national elections, the Colorado Party won 10 seats out of 99 in the Chamber of Representatives and 3 seats out of 31 in the Senate. Its presidential candidate, Guillermo Stirling, won 10.4% of the popular vote and placed third, ending the 10-year rule of the Colorado Party and the two-party system.
The Colorado Party was founded in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 17 September 1836.
Some of its significant historical leaders were Fructuoso Rivera, Venancio Flores, José Batlle y Ordóñez, Luis Batlle Berres, Jorge Pacheco Areco, Juan María Bordaberry, Julio María Sanguinetti, Luis Bernardo Pozzolo, and Jorge Batlle.
The party has historically been the most elected party in Uruguayan history with almost uninterrupted dominance during the 20th century. The Colorados were in office from 1865 to 1959, when they were defeated by the Partido Nacional in the 1958 elections. They returned to office after the 1966 elections. They won the first elections at the end of the military dictatorship, in 1984. They went on to win the 1994 and 1999 elections.
From its birth until the last decades of the 20th century its traditional rival was the conservative Partido Nacional (also called Partido Blanco).
The Colorado Party suffered its worst defeat ever in the 2004 national elections, with little over 10 per cent of the popular vote for its presidential candidate Guillermo Stirling, and having only three out of thirty national Senators. There were many reasons for the party's failure, including the economic crisis and old party leaders. Subsequently to his defeat in 2004, Guillermo Stirling endorsed Pedro Bordaberry's Vamos Uruguay movement. Bordaberry Herrán became the presidential candidate for the 2009 presidential election, and placed third, with 17 percent of the vote, behind José Mujica and Luis Alberto Lacalle. Bordaberry Herrán placed third again in the 2014 presidential election, with 13% of the vote.
Under the electoral system in place at the time called Ley de Lemas system, each political party could have as many as three presidential candidates. The combined result of the votes for a party's candidates determined which party would control the executive branch, and whichever of the winning party's candidates finished in first place would be declared President this system was used form the 1942 election until the 1994 election until in 1996, a referendum amended the constitution to restrict each party to a single presidential candidate, effective from the 1999 elections.