Chile Constitutional Referendum, September 4th 2022

[kaoras]

Great Loncon's speech, how refreshing.


Chile Vamos should've supported Politzer, but according to some sources, they thought that she was ideologically too far from them. They are gonna be irrelevant in the convention, sad but they deserve it.

Is it though? I'm sure some individual members will work fine in areas such as the political system, decentralization an so on where every list has a very diverse mix of views, but to save this country of destroying itself is absolutely necessary that the right as a bloc doesn't have veto power to block the needed changes. 

[kaoras]

After another lackluster debate performance on Sunday, Jadue has said that he will not go to any more debates, canceling 2 that were previously scheduled. He also has started to attack Boric very strongly, attacking him on his Achilles heel (his vote in favour of the anti-looting law during the social unrest, widely seen by the left as Piñerist repression). Maybe his internal polling shows Boric in upset territory?

Jadue has been making a lot of mistakes and is not really that good under scrutiny. Personally, I think his candidacy has turned the Communists in a caricature of themselves, getting too high on their own kool-aid and that has been very detrimental to the left as a whole (They were the ones who vetoed PS and threw away the chance of finally burying the Concertación and the DC, which is sad because PS and FA have actually acted as a coalition in the constitutional convention). So him losing the primary would be overall a good thing for the left, even if the right would rejoice until the end of the millennium. I still think Jadue is the favourite but who knows.

[kaoras]

Jadue’s poor campaign is hyped up by a media that hates him dearly. No doubt there are flaws, but he seems to be about as electable as BoBo Boric.

Eh, not really. Is true that Boric and Jadue have almost the same platform but Jadue is a CO-MU-NIST, you see?. And this is not a manufactured media thing (though they DO hate him a lot), common people in Chile take the party labels quite literally (this also happens to the Socialist Party though it ironically helps them). If you talk to the median voter he will tell you that he doesn't like "extremes" and that politics divide society and blablabla. The post-pinochet transition hardcoded consensus and unity on the minds of most of the adult population (that's why Lavin goes so hard on those themes). I find it extremely annoying but that's how regular folks think. Boric, and to be honest any candidate without the hammer and the sickle behind it would wipe the floor with any rightist but I genuinely think Jadue would lose.

He COULD conceivably win given the national context if he campaigned well and moderated his image, but he hasn't done that and the communists are so full of themselves right now I doubt he will do that in the future.

If Jadue wins the most likely scenario is a Provoste victory, and while she is probably the single most leftist element on her party, it's kinda depressing going through the social uprising and the constituent elections only to end up with a christian democrat president.

[kaoras]

How would a centre-left social democrat who is strongly in favour of an expanded welfare state but not necessarily enamoured of cultural radicalism or strong left-wing rhetoric vote in the upcoming Presidential election?

Boric, because of the perceived "moderation". Also, keep in mind that voting according to cultural issues is not really something that many people do here.

[kaoras]

Results in Australia (number of votes):

Jadue: 471
Boric: 412

Sichel 81
Briones 58
Lavín 42
Desbordes 21

Results in New Zealand:

Boric 183
Jadue 179

Sichel 29
Briones 11
Lavín 9
Desbordes 4

[kaoras]

Also good old Decide Chile for nice results maps: https://2021.decidechile.cl/#/ev/2021.pri

[kaoras]

Decide Chile apparently isn't doing maps. My disappointment is incommensurable and my day is ruined. Boric is also winning in few stations in Santiago and Puente Alto

[kaoras]

Just a clarification, sorry for the comparison, but the Boric vs Jardue race is basically the same as a Left Bloc vs Communist Party race in my country, right?

Yes, pretty much.

[kaoras]

Just a clarification, sorry for the comparison, but the Boric vs Jardue race is basically the same as a Left Bloc vs Communist Party race in my country, right?

Yes, pretty much.

Thanks. So the results so far, still very, very early, on both sides are quite good for Provoste, it seems.

Actually there were some rumours about Provoste not even bothering if the winners were Boric and Sichel, the source is not really reliable but the consensus is that the best scenario for Provoste is Jadue-Lavín.

[kaoras]

Just a clarification, sorry for the comparison, but the Boric vs Jardue race is basically the same as a Left Bloc vs Communist Party race in my country, right?

Yes, pretty much.

Thanks. So the results so far, still very, very early, on both sides are quite good for Provoste, it seems.

Actually there were some rumours about Provoste not even bothering if the winners were Boric and Sichel, the source is not really reliable but the consensus is that the best scenario for Provoste is Jadue-Lavín.

Interesting. In the eventuality she doesn't run and the center-left opt out, who would she endorse? Sichel, maybe, right? as he was in the past from PDC.

Yes, and parallels don't end there, you can say this is the same as the Left Bloc vs CDU, as the Communist Party is allied with the Social Green Regionalist Federation, which is a very nasty and corrupt party, but is an interesting coincidence (if you see them like a Green Party)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Green_Regionalist_Federation

Poor PEV, the satelite party of PCP, they wished to be just a bit corrupt.  Just kidding, but they are very irrelevant. That party, the Social Green Regionalist Federation, at least contested elections on its own, PEV never did that.

Why are they seen as very corrupt?

No, Provoste would endorse UC candidate (probably narvaez). She is really lefty for a DC, I think she would even support Jadue against the right.

FREVS is basically a loose collection of ex-concertación machines and got caught in a very nasty affair with a group of mayors tied to narcotraphic in their process of expansion to Santiago.

[kaoras]

We are done here. Is Sichel-Boric. Chilean polling shines once more

[kaoras]

Most voted pact in Santiago. Red is AD, Blue is CV

[kaoras]

Kinda worried about the turnout. I expected more advantage for AD. 

[kaoras]

In the feed I'm watching, 24horas.cl, they are saying that there were center-right voters who voted for Boric in order to defeat Jardue.

Yeah, the turnout difference in D11 say otherwise. Is spin to explain why AD beat them in turnout.

[kaoras]

A great victory for the colour yellow

As I said, Boric and Jadue have basically the same platform and Sichel didn't win by being centrist, it was a backlash against Lavín for being centrist.

But political analysts who don't know better and kept saying that everybody wanted more of the economic model before the social uprising will probably repeat you point, yes.

[kaoras]

If it was literally any pollster but CADEM I would be more inclined to believe them that akshually our banned polls were right, but they have been a laughingstock since their foundation and politicians keep dancing around it.

[kaoras]

If it was literally any pollster but CADEM I would be more inclined to believe them that akshually our banned polls were right, but they have been a laughingstock since their foundation and politicians keep dancing around it.

Hmm.. so CADEM is the Chilean version of Rasmussen?

The thing with Cadem is that
1) The director is very close to Piñera
2) Coincidentally, they always have the best numbers for Piñera
3) All their polls seem engineered to push an Agenda
4) They are almost never right

[kaoras]

Question y’all. I just read this in La Tercera:

En el Frente Amplio no hay dudas. Si no fuera por el requisito de la edad -un candidato tiene que tener 35 años cumplidos para optar a la Presidencia de la República- el abanderado del conglomerado sería Giorgio Jackson.

That is, the FA would have ran Giorgio Jackson but he was too young. But he’d turn 35 before the next presidential inauguration - is it really the case that you need to be 35 to be a candidate, not just to be president (as in the US)? Seems a bit silly to me, and unfair to Jackson.

Yep, it used to be 40 until 2005 actually. I tolerate Jackson more than Boric actually, who like, this year saw the light and realized the dangers of ideological purism. Honestly, I have never felt more empty after a winning vote.

[kaoras]

Chile Vamos primary map:
Purple: Sichel
Red: Lavín
Green: Desbordes
Briones didn't won any comuna



Sichel victory was fairly wide. Lavin tended to do better on rural zones but still lost almost everywhere, save for the rural zones of the Altiplano in the north and some geographically massive comunas in the far south.

Desbordes did better in border towns and zones with high military presence, winning the sparsely populated comuna of Cisnes in Aysén. Briones did better in the upper class fortress of Santiago, but even there it couldn't break 20%.

[kaoras]

Apruebo Dignidad Map.

Green: Boric
Red: Jadue
Gray: no votes (Colchane)



Jadue main source of strength was old minning zones, hence why he won a lot of rural areas in the north (he came close to winning in Atacama region with 47%, his best result nationwide).



Jadue also won several low-income comunas in North and South Santiago, the most impoverished ones were his "Old left" style was a better fit and where FA has always struggled (In the constituent elections in South Santiago they got beaten by Lista del Pueblo AND Unidad Constituyente). Jadue also won in Recoleta where he is mayor by honestly a fairly anemic 10% margin, 55-45, miles behind the crushing victory Boric got in his home region of Magallanes where he reached 76%

[kaoras]

Totally disagree with the Boric/Jackson comments. Boric is a much better politician thank Jackson and has shown that he is a winner in politics. He defeated Camila Vallejo at her prime for the Student Federation Presidency in 2011, he was able to being elected as congressman in an election without the support/omission of other coalitions (unlike George), that was really epic.

Despite being a left-wing politician (his party, Convergencia Social is clearly to the left of Revolucion Democratica) he has shown continually that he is able to build bridges with other sectors in order to achieve political goals. He is not (and has never been) a purist (I think that is more a negative view some people on the center left like have about the Broad Front).

For me, Boric is pretty similar to Errejon (it would be great to read the view of Velasco on this). He is a leftist but has the "Vocacion de Mayoria". That is why the Broad Front was created, because we wanted a left-wing coalition that wanted to actually govern. Thank god the Broad Front doesn't have the ego problems Podemos had.

As I mentioned before, I was undecided until the last day but voted for Boric. Unlike Kaoras, I''m very a happy and excited.

Are you really counting students politics? lol. The right in 2013 was structurally much weaker in Magallanes than in Santiago Centro.

In any case, If Boric has always had a majority vocation, why did he spent all Bachelet government trashing all her reforms because they weren't exactly how he liked it? Why did he endorse Guillier only the day before the second round saying something like "Eh.. they both equally sucks, but I guess poor people would suffer under Piñera so I will vote for Guillier but I really hate him trust me"?

Boric got his reputation as amarillo by hugging Piñera with all his useless national unity accords the first month of his new government (oh, but to Bachelet, Boric wouldn't even give her the time of day). I voted for him because Jadue would be a trainwreck and the right has to be kicked out of power at any cost, but honestly had you made this comment yesterday I would have literally changed my vote to Jadue. But don't try to gaslight me with all this nonsense, I have memory and I remember all of his petulant-entitled rich kid speeches about how Bachelet projects were totally useless because they were not radical enough.

Also, if you want to say that Boric has political skills (which he has), Errejón really is not a good comparison.  

[kaoras]

Pamela Jiles is finally out of the race (rejoice!), and Jorge Sharp is starting to make some noise.

Considering a Jiles or Jadue victory seemed quite possible until very recently, it will be a huge relief not to see either in the first round.

Rumours about Sharp running for La Lista del Pueblo but I think that if they even manage to coordinate something they would run a nobody.

@Kaoras who would you have preferred to have been the candidate of the Left if not Boric or Jadue, if I may ask? (Referring to individuals who didn't end up running as well etc.)

Bachelet

Well, I'm still nominally with Paula Narvaez until she is forced to drop in favour of Provoste but she is honestly a weak candidate, a shame because I liked his platform more than any of the others. All of the once huge UC field sucked and the rest of the left is even more purist (like Sharp and La Lista del Pueblo, though maybe I would still vote for them as a protest vote if they don't get too idiotic). But to be honest, I don't really like any of the current national leftist figures, I gave up long ago about voting for a candidate that I like.

[kaoras]

Are you really counting students politics? lol. The right in 2013 was structurally much weaker in Magallanes than in Santiago Centro.

Well, in Chile student politics is relatively relevant and we are talking about the year student politics was the most relevant thing in the country (and well, Jackson, Vallejo and Boric came from that year). We was able to defeat one of the most important political figures of the country of the last decade at her prime. She lost against Boric in a year she was chosen person of the year in several magazines/newspapers (like The Guardian).

Well, they may be structurally, but was mainly because there was another movement leaded by Bianchi (he leaned to the right) that was very strong in Magallanes (and had the money). Boric's rivals weren't the New Majority and Chile Vamos, were the New Majority and Karim Bianchi. His victory was totally unexpected.

You should know that students politics are a dumpster fire. And they were relevant, nowadays nobody cares. But in U de Chile you win by being more holier than thou, exactly how Boric won against more pragmatic Camila Vallejo.

But look, you didn't adress the core of my issue. To say one example, regarding the Ley de Inclusión, Boric spent years trashing it in Congress. I come from a población (poor neighborhood) and when I was 6 years old I got rejected by a Public School the moment my mum said our address. Now thanks to that law, and despite Boric best efforts, nobody will have to face that kind of discrimination and the educative apartheid this country has is on its way out. Now, I don't expect you, or Sr. Gabriel Boric Font, alumni of the fully private British School of Punta Arenas, to understand how deeply insulting was hearing him calling this law useless in all of his speeches engineered for the twitter crowd, but let's just say that the perennial FA problems with low income voters are deeper than "muh caciques/machines".

Also, please remind me of talking to you the next time I even consider voting FA, I don't want to make the same mistake again.

[kaoras]

In an incredibly shocking twist that has stunned the entire Republic, Provoste is announcing her candidacy.

Truly Unbelievable. There are rumours that she could even "freeze" her DC militancy, that's how toxic the brand is right now.

Backstabbing and maneuvering to withdraw Narvaez are underway. It will probably take like a week at least.

[kaoras]

In an incredibly shocking twist that has stunned the entire Republic, Provoste is announcing her candidacy.

Truly Unbelievable. There are rumours that she could even "freeze" her DC militancy, that's how toxic the brand is right now.

Backstabbing and maneuvering to withdraw Narvaez are underway. It will probably take like a week at least.

I’ve seen 0 indication that Narváez has any plan to quit on her own, but the other options are also bad and every day they don’t decide on what to do just makes things worse? Do you think they’re going to have a party convention or an electronic vote or what?

Well, Provoste said that she is open to an "open, democratic and participative" mechanism that sounds like electronic voting. But it's the ex-concertación, so you should expect the most harmful and self-destroying option, so I wouldn't rule out backstabbing and back door maneuvering until Narvaez and Maldonado have no choice but to step down, or some farcical convention.