General elections were held in Costa Rica on 4 April 1853 to elect a president for a six-year term. Incumbent president Juan Rafael Mora Porras was re-elected to a full term with 91.2% of electoral votes.
According to historian Iván Molina, from this election onward and for the following four decades, electoral processes played a largely secondary role in the selection of the president, serving primarily a symbolic function of legitimization. During this period, presidents were effectively chosen through political agreements between the coffee-growing bourgeoisie and the military, a pattern that persisted until the consolidation of the Liberal State during 1880s and the protests following the 1889 election. In the second-degree election, Mora received 83 electoral votes.
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