Leftist Group Stands Good Chance in Uruguay Vote : Politics: President to be elected today. Nation’s two traditional parties challenged for first time by socialist.

Uruguayans elect a new president today, and the chance that a socialist could win has injected extra excitement into the race.

This is the first time in Uruguayan history that a leftist coalition has seriously challenged the country’s two traditional parties for national power. Pollsters and commentators say the three-way presidential contest is too close to call.

The socialist candidate is Tabare Vazquez, a physician and former mayor of Montevideo whose Broad Front coalition includes Communists and former guerrillas.

Other leading candidates are lawyer Alberto Volonte of the governing Blanco (White) Party and former President Julio Sanguinetti of the Colorado (Red) Party.

Recent political polls put all three parties within a few percentage points of one another.

A survey published last week by the Vox polling firm, for example, gave the Blancos 28% of the voter preference, the Colorados 27.9% and Vazquez’s coalition 25.9%.

A total of 20 presidential candidates are running. Uruguayan law allows more than one presidential candidate from each party or coalition; the top-placing candidate of the party or coalition that draws the most votes wins the presidency.

Volonte is a former president of the national electric company. Another Blanco candidate is Sen. Juan Ramirez, who was interior minister under President Luis Alberto Lacalle. Lacalle is constitutionally barred from immediate reelection.

Sanguinetti, who was president from 1985-1990, is the overwhelming favorite among Colorado candidates. Far behind him, according to polls, is another former Colorado president, Jorge Pacheco Areco.

Uruguay, a country of 3.2 million people, was known as Latin America’s most advanced welfare state for much of this century. But beginning in the 1960s, the national economy declined as government deficits and inflation soared. The country’s traditional democracy was shaken by guerrilla violence in the early 1970s, then interrupted by a decade of harsh military dictatorship.

Although Sanguinetti and Lacalle have presided over moderate economic growth and some progress in taming unruly inflation, they have failed to bring back what nostalgic Uruguayans remember as the golden years of the 1940s and 1950s.

Many voters see Lacalle’s market reform policies as a threat to the traditional welfare state. In a 1992 plebiscite, for example, voters overwhelmingly rejected a government-backed proposal to privatize the state telephone company.

Sanguinetti, who opposed the privatization, was leading in the polls by a wide margin early this year. Then Volonte--who had never run for office before--began gaining popularity, propelled by his congenial campaign style and his reputation as an efficient administrator.

Vazquez’s appeal is based on disappointment in Colorado and Blanco administrations and on the popularity of the welfare-state tradition, analysts say. But they also say radical Marxist influence in the leftist coalition is a handicap for Vazquez.

“A lot of people don’t trust the radicals,” a foreign diplomat said.