Paraguayans voted overwhelmingly to keep the long-ruling Colorado Party in power for five more years, backing its presidential candidate and giving it control of both houses of Congress.
Santiago Peña, a 44-year-old economist, had 43% of the votes in a preliminary count from Sunday's election, with nearly all voting places reporting. That was far ahead of the 27% held by his closest challenger, Efraín Alegre of the Pact for a New Paraguay, a broad-based opposition coalition that had united in an effort to bring to an end Colorado’s seven-decade stranglehold on power.
