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| Costa Rica election: Carlos Alvarado set to be president | Costa Rica election: Carlos Alvarado set to be president |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Carlos Alvarado, Costa Rica's centre-left presidential candidate, is set to be the country's next leader after elections on Sunday. | |
| Costa Rica's electoral council made the announcement based on ballots from 91% of polling stations. | Costa Rica's electoral council made the announcement based on ballots from 91% of polling stations. |
| Mr Alvarado won 60% of the vote to his conservative opponent's 39%, the near-complete count shows. | |
| His rival Fabricio Alvarado (no relation) has conceded defeat. | |
| Alvarados versus Alvarados | |
| Carlos Alvarado, 38, is a former labour minister, ex journalist, novelist and sometime rock singer. He ran on a progressive platform under the slogan Elijo el futuro (I choose the future). | |
| Fabricio Alvarado, 43, is an evangelical preacher, one-time TV journalist and Christian music singer. He was standing for the conservative National Restoration Party (PRN) and had vowed to defend "traditional values". | |
| In the first round, Fabricio Alvarado secured the most votes, but missed the number needed to win outright. | |
| That left him facing Carlos Alvarado in a second round vote. | |
| Poll predictions put the candidates neck-and-neck in the weeks leading up to voting day. | |
| What were the election issues? | |
| Points of debate included fears about Costa Rica's national deficit and the unprecedented rise of its murder rate. | |
| But the close-run contest pivoted on the debate over legalising same-sex marriage. | |
| In January, the Inter-American Human Rights Court ruled that gay marriages should be recognised - a decision applied to all signatory nations of the American Convention on Human Rights. | |
| Fabricio Alvarado strongly opposed the ruling. Carlos Alvarado backed it, and branded his opponent homophobic. | |
| Single-issue contest | |
| Will Grant, BBC Mexico and Central America Correspondent | |
| With the result now irreversible, many Costa Ricans are breathing a huge sigh of relief. Plenty of voters weren't necessarily in love with the ruling party's candidate, Carlos Alvarado, but saw the idea of handing the presidency to his opponent - a former evangelical pastor who had railed against the "secular state" - as unthinkable. | |
| In the end, the election hinged on one key topic: same-sex marriage. The evangelical conservative candidate, Fabricio Alvarado, was only able to secure around 40% of the vote as Costa Ricans sided with the centre-left former labour minister, and a degree of continuity in office. | |
| The Central American nation has a tradition of political stability and it didn't take long for the defeated candidate to concede an election which had been expected to be much closer. |