[12][13][verification needed] It participated for the first time in an election the same year of its foundation, obtaining 11.04% of the votes, three senators and eleven representatives.

[16] This political group applied to the Electoral Court in early 2019 to request its registration as a party, to compete in the presidential primaries of that year.

In the June 2019 presidential primaries, Cabildo Abierto had had more than 40,000 votes across the country, making it the fourth Uruguayan political force.

Their presidential candidate was Guido Manini Ríos, an army general under President Tabaré Vázquez that opposed left-wing judicial activism aimed at prosecuting members of the armed forces on human rights charges.

[25] Progressive international news outlets such as El País from Madrid analyse this phenomenon as a sign of the rise of the populist right in the mold of Donald Trump and Brexit in a traditionally centrist country.