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“Today, we have succeeded and transformed the nation’s narrative. … We are recognized as the second political force in the country,” exclaimed Juan Dalmau Ramírez, the gubernatorial candidate for the Alliance (“Alianza de País”) formed by his Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and the Citizen Victory Movement (MVC), as he arrived at the PIP central committee headquarters on election night.
“Who could have predicted that a candidate from the Puerto Rican Independence Party, representing a nationwide alliance, would shatter the two-party structure in Puerto Rico?” he proclaimed, asserting the Alliance’s victory after a vigorous campaign aimed at highlighting the supposed threats and challenges of an independence party’s success for the island.
On Wednesday morning, following the State Elections Commission’s release of a second preliminary certification of partial election results, Dalmau had garnered 32.78%, totaling 364,145 votes cast for governor, putting him in second place behind leading vote-getter, Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón of the New Progressive Party (NPP) who commanded 39.46%, or 438,183 votes.
Meanwhile, the candidate from the once dominant Popular Democratic Party (PDP), Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz González, found himself in a distant third with 21% (233,470) of the total votes.
Javier Jiménez Pérez from the Dignity Project secured the fourth-highest vote count with 73,613 votes, or 6.63%, while Javier Córdova Iturregui from the MVC received 1,346 votes.
Dalmau stated that the journey that brought the PIP and the Alliance to “this electoral triumph” was not merely the result of the 2024 election campaign but rather a process that has been “developing over a significant period.”
“This has been a collective awakening of the country’s conscience, where previously 14 percent backed my candidacy and another 14 percent supported the Citizen Victory candidacy,” the pro-independence leader explained. “All of a sudden, 28 percent chose to envision a new nation. And today, we have not only garnered the support of those two political factions, but also many notable figures from the [PDP] and statehood proponents [NPP] placed their trust in me … ”
PIP Sen. María de Lourdes Santiago, who successfully secured re-election, remarked that “what we are witnessing today is truly historic.”
Santiago predicted that the Alliance could see even greater electoral achievements with the election of several of its candidates to various posts, illustrated by lawyer Adriana Gutiérrez from the PIP, who was elected to the District 4 (San Juan) seat in the island House of Representatives.
Despite the voting gap between Dalmau and González Colón, the PIP leader maintained that no results are final until every vote has been counted.
