Paraguay elects 263 intendants from a roll of 5,043,154

Paraguay voted on Sunday for every municipal executive and council in the country. The Tribunal Superior de Justicia Electoral called 5,043,154 people onto the roll. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 5 p.m. The winners take office for five years, 2026 to 2031. The election does not choose a president. It does choose who runs the 263 districts, including Asunción.

The offices on the ballot add up to 5,927 seats if substitutes are counted. There are 263 intendants. There are 2,832 full members of the juntas municipales and 2,832 substitutes. ABC Color reported 18,973 candidacies: 630 for intendant, 530 men and 100 women, and 18,343 for council seats, 12,437 men and 5,906 women. An earlier count from the electoral tribunal's own call listed 54 political organisations, 32 parties, 22 movements and 214 alliances. Lists compete, and on the same list candidates compete with each other for preference votes.

The roll splits almost evenly by sex: 2,550,659 men, 50.58 percent, and 2,492,495 women, 49.42 percent. Young voters are a large slice. One pre-election tally put 1,363,895 young people on the roll and 1,187,379 first-time voters, about 24.3 percent of the electorate. A low turnout among that group would move district results more than a national presidential race usually does, because many interior districts are small.

Asunción is the race the capital press is watching. Four names are on the mayoral ballot. Camilo Pérez stands for the Asociación Nacional Republicana, the Colorado Party, on list 1. Soledad Núñez stands for Juntos por Asunción on list 4, an opposition unity ticket. Rodrigo Franco stands for the Christian Democratic Party on list 6. Arlene Aquino stands for Patria Soñada on list 300. The Colorado Party has held the national government for most of the democratic period. Losing the capital's intendancy would not change the presidency. It would hand the opposition the city budget, the bus contracts and the zoning board for five years.

Preference voting inside the list is the detail that decides junta seats and is easy to miss from outside. A voter does not only pick a party. On these ballots, candidates on the same list are ranked by the personal votes they receive. A well-known name at the bottom of a Colorado list in a border district can outpoll the party favourite. That is why the candidate count is so much larger than the seat count: 18,343 council hopefuls for 2,832 full seats.

The tribunal formalised the call in Resolution 166/2025. Results will come in district by district through Sunday night. Interior towns with a few thousand voters can declare an intendant hours before Asunción finishes. The national story on Monday will be how many of the 263 districts stay with the Colorado Party, and whether Núñez's list holds the capital. The structural fact is simpler. For the next five years, local tax collection, road contracts and market permits sit with whoever wins today, and the substitutes on the junta are already elected if a full member resigns.