Bolivia's election could shift power from the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas) after nearly 20 years. The party risks losing legal status if it fails to secure 3% of the vote, according to polls. Opposition candidates Samuel Doria Medina and Jorge Tuto Quiroga are nearly tied, while incumbent Luis Arce has opted not to run amid unpopularity. Morales faces an arrest warrant and is advocating null votes, claiming this would signify his victory. Political analysts suggest a slight chance of a third candidate making it to a runoff.
The party, which came to power with the first election of Evo Morales in 2005, risks losing its legal status if it fails to reach 3% of the vote, a threshold it has not hit in polls.
The incumbent president, Luis Arce, 61, deeply unpopular amid the country's worst economic crisis in four decades, decided not to run.
Morales, 65, is the target of an arrest warrant for allegedly fathering a child with a 15-year-old and has been entrenched in a coca-growing region of central Bolivia since October.
Carlos Toranzo, a political analyst, said: "Before Morales's call, null votes were about 10%; now they're 12%."
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