SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The two parties that have dominated Puerto Rican politics for decades are losing their grip as they face the stiffest competition yet from a younger generation fed up with the island’s corruption, chronic power outages and mismanagement of public funds. For the first time in the island's governor's race, a third-party candidate has a powerful second lead in the polls ahead of the U.S.
territory's election Tuesday — and some experts say there’s a possibility he could win. “This election is already historic,” said political analyst and university professor Jorge Schmidt Nieto. “It already marks a before and an after.
” Juan Dalmau is running for Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and the Citizen Victory Movement, established in 2019. A Gaither international poll this month shows Dalmau closing in on Jenniffer González, a member of the New Progressive Party and Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress. She beat Gov.
Pedro Pierluisi in their party’s primary in June. Gaither’s poll shows Dalmau with 29% of support versus González’s 31% as he nearly caught up with her since a different poll in July showed him with only 24% compared with González’s 43%. Coming in third was Jesús Manuel Ortiz, of the Popular Democratic Party, followed by Javier Jiménez of Project Dignity, a conservative party created in 2019.
Puerto Rican politics revolve around the island's status, and up until 2016, the New Progressive Party, which supports .
