LIKE a highly anticipated football fixture, Uruguay’s presidential election dominated conversation before its first round in October. Partisans hung party flags from their balconies and draped them over cars. The outcome was thrillingly uncertain. But like many such contests the actual event is turning out to be lopsided. Tabaré Vázquez, a former president, just missed outright victory in the first round, held on October 26th. Barring an upset, he will win the second on November 30th handily.

The main reason for this is that Uruguayans consider themselves to be relatively lucky; they are voting for continuity rather than change. Thanks to sensible economic policies the economy grew by 4.4% last year, about two percentage points faster than the regional average. Inflation, at 8.1%, is too high, but nowhere near the crazy rate in neighbouring Argentina. Social programmes championed by the centre-left Broad Front, the party of both Mr Vázquez and his successor, José Mujica, have ensured that most Uruguayans have profited from the benign conditions.

Uruguayans remember fondly Mr Vázquez’s first presidency, from 2005 to 2010. It coincided with a global commodities boom, which made for buoyant economic growth. He left office with an approval rating of better than 60%. Mr Mujica has been equally beloved. He governed with folksy flair, donating 90% of his salary to charity and eschewing the presidential palace in favour of a ranch house with a corrugated metal roof outside Montevideo.

Mr Vázquez’s second-round rival, Luis Lacalle Pou, of the centre-right National Party, will probably inherit most of the support that went to the conservative Colorado Party in the first round. He is more hawkish on inflation than Mr Vázquez and has promised a tighter fiscal policy. But the young lawyer failed to connect with ordinary Uruguayans. The son of a former president, he attended private school and lives in a gated neighbourhood. At 41, he is too young to govern, many Uruguayans think.

If Mr Vázquez beats him he would be just the second president to win re-election since democracy was restored in 1985. In parliamentary elections held on the same day as the first presidential round, voters handed the Broad Front a third consecutive majority, so if Mr Vázquez beats Mr Lacalle Pou, the front will control national politics.

Assuming he wins, Mr Vázquez’s main preoccupations will be crime and education, says Ignacio Zuasnabar of Equipos, a polling group. Uruguay is one of the safest countries in the region but the number of muggings has risen fivefold in the past 20 years and the number of murders has jumped by 80%. Mr Mujica sought to deal with this problem by reforming the police and by legalising the sale of marijuana to weaken drug trafficking gangs, a measure that brought Uruguay brief celebrity (and encouraged us to name it 2013’s “country of the year”). So far, though, the crime rate has not dropped. Uruguayans worry, too, about their schools. In 2012 their country came 56th among 65 in the OECD’s PISA tests of competence in reading, maths and science. Mr Vázquez has talked about issuing vouchers for children to attend private school, but his plans are vague.

He will not tamper much with Mr Mujica’s policies (and the plain-spoken former president, who will be a senator, will surely object if he does). Mr Vázquez argued against the legalisation of abortion in 2012 but will be reluctant to try to reverse it, since it is popular. The future of cannabis is foggier. Uruguayans dislike the law that legalises and regulates its sale. Mr Vázquez is unlikely to want to repeal a measure enacted by his own party, says Daniel Chasquetti, a political scientist at the University of the Republic. But Mr Vázquez says he will not shrink from making necessary changes. Whatever they turn out to be, they will not harsh Uruguay’s mellow.