
Former president Jose Maria Figueres comfortably led the preliminary vote count in Sunday's Costa Rican presidential election, with former finance minister Rodrigo Chaves poised to defy expectations to face him in a second-round run-off.
Figueres was seen winning 27.3% of the vote based on returns from nearly three-quarters of polling stations, with economist Chaves pulling past evangelical Christian Fabricio Alvarado to carve out an advantage in second with 16.6% of the tally.