Orsi and Delgado face each other in a single head-to-head match with the attention focused on the undecided

The candidates for the Presidency, Yamandu Orsi (Broad Front) and Alvaro Delgado (National Party) will meet tonight in an expected debate,with which they hope to tip the electoral balance in their favor one week before runoff that will definitively seal his political fate.

The event, which will be broadcast from 9 p.m. on the national radio and television network, will bring voters the novelty of confronting Orsi with Delgado, after the candidate of the Broad Front (FA) avoided participating in forums in the first part of the campaign because he understood that he was in unequal conditions when debating with all the candidates of the Coalition.

Even his detractors went so far as to suggest that the former mayor of Canelones I would not participate in the face to face. Something that was categorically ruled out immediately the race for the second round began. “It’s the law,” the FA campaign manager and senator said then. Alejandro Sánchez.

Both Orsi and Delgado, who have had months of exposure since they began their journey towards Presidency With internal competition in their parties, they have lowered their public presence in recent days in order to prepare for tonight’s debate. The strategy is twofold: arrive focused and without overwhelming voters.

“The preparation is intense,” he told Scope a close collaborator of the Frente Amplista. While the white candidate posed on the shoulders of nationalist legislators, he maintained the pace of his presence inside to dedicate himself to developing his strategy for today.

What is at stake, mainly, is the conquest of the undecided -between 5 and 8% depending on the poll- and of those non-captive voters of the Coalition, for one, and of the Front, for the other.

Not a simple task if one takes into account a premise known in public opinion: presidential debates are rarely decisive for an election. Something with which the former president seems to agree José Mujica, who two days ago stated that “it was never useful for anything.”

However, they are a valuable political exercise and institutionality and they can be fertile ground in political strategy to point out the rival’s inconsistencies in the remainder of the campaign, which in the case of Uruguay It’s just 6 days since the television broadcast ended.

It is worth remembering the horrible performance that left none other than the president of the United States, Joe Biden, out of the race for re-election. Although it is more an exception to the rule than a constant, it is a demonstration that presidential debates have the potential to consolidate or destroy a candidate and, in the worst case, to lull the undecided rather than awaken them.