Chile Constitutional Referendum, September 4th 2022

[kaoras]

Are there enough centrist Chileans who like Bachelet but were still unsure about Boric for this endorsement to have a significant impact?

Not really. And, is not really centrists, is poor people and elders. For example, in La Pintana, the poster child of Santiago's "Poor neighborhoods/comunas", Boric won with 29,5% but Ominami came second with 16,5%, in contrast with the more middle class and bobo-areas where Boric neared 40%. With that kind of voters, left-inclined but wary of FA "hippie" image, Bachelet tends to be really popular, so it could help a bit there.

But again, is a bit of help, it's kinda hilarious how the right has blown this out of proportion, even Piñera commented on this today. This just distracts media coverage from the things the Kast campaign wants to focus on, which are... that Boric should have done the other kind of drug test? I honestly don't know what the hell they are doing this last week.

[kaoras]

I'm going to do some geographic #analysis with the maps shamelessly stolen from Decide Chile. I'll be going region by region, from north to south.

Arica y Parinacota





96% of the votes in this region are cast in the regional capital (highlighted in the map), Arica, a post-industrial wasteland city. Since Tarapacá (the region was split from there in 2007) shift to the right during the dictatorship, Arica has remained slightly more left-leaning than Iquique. Also, unusually for the North, it doesn’t have a significant mining industry.

It was very close between Kast and Parisi, with Boric a distant third. In the Altiplano, Parisi won General Lagos with 47% and Kast edged him by 10 votes in Putre, which has an army base. You will see a trend that Parisi usually won the isolated “abandoned by the state” Altiplano communities unless they have a military base in it. Parisi also won the tiny comuna of Camarones, south of Arica. Boric did awful in all these comunas, where Provoste was third.

Overall right vote (Kast+Sichel): 36.9%
Overall left vote (Boric+Provoste+MEO+Artés): 34.4%
Parisi: 28.7

Tarapacá






Tarapacá, the region that saw the birth of the Chilean left and the worker’s movement in its saltpeter offices, has been a right leaning region since the restoration of democracy. Maybe it was the free-tax trade area in Iquique that Pinochet established, maybe they were just way ahead of the curve.

Kast won the region thanks to his strong result in the regional capital Iquique (highlighted), where he won with 32% against 21% of Parisi and Boric. While Parisi wreaked havoc in the left vote in all the north, Boric tended to hold better in the regional capitals. Kast also won Pica, which has an air force base in it, and ran very close to Parisi in the aymara comunas of Camiña and Colchane (Kast won the former, Parisi the latter), leaving like 10% of the vote for all the other candidates. These comunas have been heavily affected by the migrant influx from Venezuela, with the migrants crossing irregularly here. Although it should be noted that here, Parisi took voters from the right, since these comunas almost always give the right over 80% of the vote.

In the rest of the region it was a Parisi landslide, especially in the dystopian Iquique-suburb of Alto Hospicio where he won 40% of the vote. While Boric did awful in the “rural” areas, it was less terrible than in Arica. Here he actually cracked double digits, along with Provoste, likely a vestige of the ancestral traditions of the area.

Overall right vote: 38.2%
Overall left vote: 34.4%
Parisi: 27.4

[kaoras]

Antofagasta






The quintessential mining region has a PIB per capita comparable to Norway but very little of its copper wealth remains in the region. Also ancestrally left-wing, in 2005 it was Bachelet best region with 61% of the vote.

It is a very boring map since Parisi won everything, but there’s a few things to look at. In the regional capital, Antofagasta (I’m highlighting every regional capital), Parisi got 29,6%, Boric was actually second with 23%, just ahead of Kast (22,3%). Kast was second overall because in the other big population center, Calama, where most of the workers of CODELCO mines live, Parisi got 40% of the vote against 20% for Kast and just 15% for Boric. Boric usually got second place in most of the comunas and came relatively close to winning the fishing town of TalTal (25-24 Parisi over Boric) and San Pedro de Atacama in the Altiplano (34-26). San Pedro mainly lives from tourism (though it is nothing like those sky centers in the US, is kinda poor) and almost half of the population are Lican Antay / Atacameños. In the Quechua border town of Ollagüe (the small one near the border), Parisi got 59% of the vote, his best result nationally I think. He also got over 50% in Maria Elena, the last saltpeter office active. Almost the whole town is the property of the mining company SQM.

Overall right vote: 28.3%
Overall left vote: 37.8%
Parisi: 33.9

[kaoras]

Atacama



Another mining region, Atacama along with Coquimbo is part of the Norte Chico, an area that has been more stubbornly left-wing than the rest of the north. It is also Provoste home region, she is from Vallenar and represents the region as a senator.




This is the only region Provoste won, narrowly edging Parisi and with Boric in third. You will note that despite the favourite daughter effect, Boric actually didn’t do worse than in the Norte Grande. This is in part because of Parisi lower share and because the right totally bombed in Atacama at all levels, 4 years after Piñera historic win here.

Provoste won thanks to her strong results in her hometown of Vallenar and the rest of the Huasco Province, winning over 40% of the vote. Provoste also narrowly won the fishing town of Chañaral with 26,1% against 25,7% of Parisi. She actually came fourth in the regional Capital, Copiapó, which was 4 way tie with Parisi on top, though she still did much better than in other regional capitals. Parisi also won Tierra Amarilla and the famous communist stronghold of Diego de Almagro. Diego de Almagro usually post the highest leftwing vote share of all the country, but in this round, the left got only 51,6% due to Parisi strong showing with 32.1%. The communists clearly have local problems here, they lost the mayorship in May to RN after 17 years making Diego de Almagro the only comuna of Atacama with a right wing mayor. Boric held better among miners themselves, barely beating Parisi in El Salvador (27,5% against 26% for Parisi and 22% for Provoste) a town whose city outline is literally a miner helmet. In the port of Caldera Parisi narrowly beat Provoste by 80 votes.
 
Overall right vote: 24.6%
Overall left vote: 51.4%
Parisi: 24%


This was the left best region after the Metropolitan Region

[kaoras]

Coquimbo



Coquimbo also has mining but is less prominent than in the rest of the north. Agriculture is very important in the valles transversales of the region. The rural agricultural communities of the valleys of Limarí and Chopa are the most left wing areas of the whole country and almost managed to drag Guillier over the finish line in 2017 despite him losing badly the big urban conurbation of La Serena-Coquimbo.




Unlike Guillier, Boric carried the usually left leaning urban centers of La Serena and Coquimbo, but his vote share was relatively even across the region. His best results were the cattle-raising town of Canela, with 30% (One of the few places outside of Santiago where he won over 30%) and the regional capital of la Serena with 28%. He also won all the comunas of Elqui province and most of Choapa province. In Limarí he only won Ovalle, which is the biggest city there

In Limarí it was free for all. Provoste took Rio Hurtado and Combarbalá. She did very well in the rural zones but tanked in La-Serena-Coquimbo. Parisi meanwhile got Monte Patria and Punitaqui, along with Salamanca in Choapa.

As usual, Parisi was weaker in the cities but is notable that his effect was strongest in the more lefty rural zones, while Boric came out on top in the rural areas of Elquí, which are typically more right-leaning and were won by Lavín in 2000. Kast got second thanks to his results in Coquimbo-La Serena, since he usually came fourth in the rural comunas, save for the ones in the Elquí river valley.

Overall right vote: 32%
Overall left vote: 48.1%
Parisi: 19.9

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1471501333249150983?s=20

Apparently there is a leaked 50-50 poll D:

[kaoras]

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1471501333249150983?s=20

Apparently there is a leaked 50-50 poll D:

Ah, I have the PDF, but I don't have a way to share it. Is actually Kast 48.5 and Boric 48.4



Those margins among young and elders are just not realistic, but they cancel each other out. The 35-44 being randomly super right-wing is just an Atlas panel idiosyncratic thing. There should be at least an Activa and a Cadem poll, will share it when I get my hands on them.

[Lumine]

The Atlas Intel poll also suggests Parisi voters swung hard towards Kast, which is not something other polls have detected (on the contrary). I suppose the poll could be right, but I feel Boric is at least 3-4 points ahead instead of a tie.

Also, Lucia Hiriart (Pinochet's widow, increasingly infamous for her longevity) just died, which is quite the remarkable coincidence. If not from JAK himself, I expect at least a few bad - or tone deaf - takes from the Republicans.

[kaoras]

The Atlas Intel poll also suggests Parisi voters swung hard towards Kast, which is not something other polls have detected (on the contrary). I suppose the poll could be right, but I feel Boric is at least 3-4 points ahead instead of a tie.

Also, Lucia Hiriart (Pinochet's widow, increasingly infamous for her longevity) just died, which is quite the remarkable coincidence. If not from JAK himself, I expect at least a few bad - or tone deaf - takes from the Republicans.

Boric will have the exact same problem since most of his followers are in the mood of dancing in her grave. It will be really hard for both of them to control their final campaign acts.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Omg can’t believe Boric murdered an old woman with communism. Anyway I’m sure she’s looking up at us all now with her husband.

[kaoras]

Valparaiso.


Valparaíso region has usually had a very significant political divide. On one hand, the interior has the geographical continuation of the valles transversales, with the Petorca river valley giving Coquimbo a run for its money in terms of leftism. The Aconcagua valley further south, once upon a time used to give the right over 70% of the vote thanks to the vote buying and the cautive vote of the inquilinos living in the big agricultural properties, haciendas and latifundios. It still voted for the right in 1970 but nowadays it has a left leaning, although not as strong as Petorca.

On the other hand, the coastal area, with the big port of Valparaíso and other fancy and not so fancy seaside town resorts. Historically, this has been right leaning, with the exception of the industrial port of San Antonio. A typical election map looked like this (2009 election):


Nowadays, with FA irruption, the area has trended hard to the left.



Boric won Petorca valley with ease, with Provoste and Parisi getting strong results there and matching Kast. In Aconcagua, Boric won the urban centers of San Felipe and Los Andes because the left vote was more concentrated on him (Provoste got 10% instead of the 15% she got in the rural areas) while Kast took several comunas thanks to the vote split and a very strong Parisi performance, getting up to 20%. Parisi also came out on top in Nogales and Hijuelas, the southernmost comunas were he won and that are also part of the valles transversales.

In the coastal area, Kast won almost all of the Quillota province, along with the affluent cities of Villa del Mar and Concón, part of Valparaiso metro area. Boric managed to put up a fight in most of the summer vacation coastal towns, winning several of them such as El Tabo, El Quisco, and Puchuncavi, while Kast won the rest. Sichel (remember that he was a thing?) did decent in these towns, particularly the more affluent /rich people summer house ones, such as Zapallar and Santo Domingo, along with the very wealthy city “suburb” of Concón. In Valparaiso proper, Boric got a very strong 35% of the vote against 23% of Kast. His 15k vote margin there was bigger than the overall gap in the region (12k)

Boric also won the islands of Juan Fernandez (45%, actually his best result nationwide) and Isla de Pascua/Rapa Nui in Polinesia, with 33% of the vote.

Overall right vote: 38.1%
Overall left vote: 48.1%
Parisi: 13.1

[H. Ross Peron]

What explains Valparaiso's fairly substantial shift to the left? Is it more due to demographic changes within the city or a shift in voting patterns?

[kaoras]

What explains Valparaiso's fairly substantial shift to the left? Is it more due to demographic changes within the city or a shift in voting patterns?

I genuinely don't know. Valparaíso has a hippie and bohemian vibe (but waaaaaay past its prime), son in that sense the FA could be a better fit there, but I'm just speculating. A "curious" thing is that Valparaíso and Santiago are 2 areas where the left should have done well before 1973, being urban and industrial, but where they didn't find success. And now, they are trending hard towards its side while the north keeps slipping.

[kaoras]

CADEM:

Boric 41 (+2)
Kast 34 (-2)

55-45 without undecideds



54% believe Boric won the debate, 28% Kast.

[Oryxslayer]

What explains Valparaiso's fairly substantial shift to the left? Is it more due to demographic changes within the city or a shift in voting patterns?

I genuinely don't know. Valparaíso has a hippie and bohemian vibe (but waaaaaay past its prime), son in that sense the FA could be a better fit there, but I'm just speculating. A "curious" thing is that Valparaíso and Santiago are 2 areas where the left should have done well before 1973, being urban and industrial, but where they didn't find success. And now, they are trending hard towards its side while the north keeps slipping.

I would note that the city of Valparaíso was one of only 3 places in the county where Sanchez finished first in 2017 - and one of the two others was Rapa Nui.

[kaoras]

Panel Ciudadano UDD:

Boric 44-Kast 37

Without undecideds.
Boric 54- Kast 46



Is getting kinda hard to tell which leaks are real because Kast really has gone insanely mad with all the fake news. I fear that the fake news strategy will not stop after the election.

[kaoras]

Región Metropolitana de Santiago.





Nowhere is the country’s inequality as visible as in Santiago. El barrio alto, composed of Vitacura, Providencia, Las Condes and Lo Barnechea is absurdly rich, with nothing to envy to the fanciest neighborhoods of US and Europe. The poor people that lived there were literally expelled during the dictatorship (save for a few exceptions) and reubicated in other places. On the other hand, Red Velvet’s city elites living in the periphery of north and south Santiago live in massively overcrowded poblaciones with no parks and very deficient public and private services. There are also middle class areas such as Maipú, La Florida and Puente Alto, suburbs where it is usual to commute for more than 2 hours to work, and other bobo and gentrified areas such as Ñuñoa, Santiago Centro and parts of Providencia. The rest of the region outside the urban limits are small cities and agricultural towns.



Santiago was Boric and the left best region, something very unusual since it usually votes exactly as the country as a whole, with the astronomical margins of the right in the barrio alto compensating the softer left edge of the poorest comunas. It should be noted that already in 2017 Guillier did slightly better in the metropolitan region than nationwide (46,8 vs 45,3)

Boric's best results were in Santiago Centro and Ñuñoa, the latter being the origin of the term ñuñoismo that is used in Chile to refer to “wokeism”. There, he hit 39% of the vote. Boric support was higher closer to the city centre, also getting good results in San Juaquín and San Miguel. A tier below were the results in the massively populated, mostly middle class comunas of Puente Alto, La Florida and Macul, where he got 36%. In the poor areas of the periphery, Boric got to the low 30’s, save for La Pintana where he dropped to 29% and the communist stronghold of Pedro Aguirre Cerda (38%). This was in part because Ominami very strong performance among low income voters, getting third place in most of south Santiago and coming second in La Pintana, generally approaching 15% of the vote. Provoste vote share was fairly even across Santiago. For all the talk about #trends, the combined left vote was higher in the poorest comunas than in the bobo zones (61,7% in La Pintana against 54,7% in Ñuñoa for example), but in the latter the vote was more concentrated on Boric. In Bajos de Mena, “Chile’s biggest ghetto” and part of Puente Alto, Boric won 31%, Parisi 18%, MEO 17% and Kast barely scored 13,7%.

In the barrio alto, Boric and the rest of the left were crushed as usual, not even reaching double digits in Vitacura and Lo Barnechea. Boric however did very well in more mixed but still upper-income comunas such as Providencia (30%) and La Reina (28%).

Kast got around 50% of the vote in the Barrio Alto while Sichel got around 30%. In the other upper middle class comunas, such as Huechuraba, Ñuñoa, and La Reina, Sichel did very well comparatively speaking, getting way closer to Kast than in Vitacura-Lo Barnechea-Las Condes. Kast also won very narrowly in some rural comunas in the south of the region. Kast and Sichel did decently in middle class comunas and those near the city centre (around 20-25% for Kast and 10-15% for Sichel), but their performance was a disaster in the low income areas, where Kast fell below 20% and Sichel got stuck in single digits.

This was Parisi's worst region and what dragged him down nationally. He found moderate success in low income comunas but couldn’t manage double digits in the rest of the city. He was almost non-existent in the Barrio Alto, getting 1% in Las Condes and 0,4% in Vitacura.

Overall right vote: 40.4%
Overall left vote: 52%
Parisi: 7.7%

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I’m the guy in Las Condes who voted for Parisi. I identify with him as a weirdo who hates paying child support.

[buritobr]

My forecast

Boric 50.3%, Kast 49.7%

[Lumine]

The PDG held an online vote yesterday (24.000 out of 44.000 party members voted), results were unveiled today as Kast 61%, Boric 7%, Null/Blank/No endorsement 32%. As a result, Parisi uploaded a video criticizing Boric on a number of points (including somehow portraying him as a darling of the media), and stating that, if he could vote, he'd vote JAK.

What the effect of this might be is unclear (Parisi may be able to speak for his party members, but his voters may be a different thing), but it's certainly not welcome news for Boric after what was a strong final week of campaigning for him.

[kaoras]

Atlas Intel:

Boric 49.4 (+1)
Kast 47.4 (-1.1)

Activa:

Boric 40.9 (-1.3)
Kast 34 (+5.7)

Activa variation is at odds with literally every other pollster but they were giving an unusually large lead to Boric, which was weird considering they aren't a particularly left-friendly pollster. Maybe they are just reverting to the mean. With likely voters and without undecided its Boric 54.5 - Kast 45.5

[kaoras]

O'Higgins



I’m going to start going more quickly through these.

Kast got a very narrow victory over Boric in O’Higgins, a region that once upon a time also used to be a huge rightist stronghold due to vote-buying. O’Higgins, along with Maule and Ñuble, are what comes to people when they think in the “countryside”. There were almost no landslides here, almost every comuna was decided by narrow margins. Boric won in the regional capital Rancagua and surrounding comunas. While those are conveniently near the border of the metropolitan region, there actually isn’t much geographic continuity since Kast won the comunas directly above. Kast and Sichel did well in Machalí (27% and 15% respectively), home to El Teniente copper mine (their workers mostly live in the Rancagua-Machalí conurbation). Parisi was particularly strong in Rancagua where he got 17%, meanwhile, Provoste tanked in this metro area with just 9%.

Kast won basically by stacking small margins in the rural comunas. Most of these wins are product of vote splitting between Boric and Provoste, Provoste did well in the rural areas, even passing 20% and winning Palmilla.



Overall right vote: 40.4%
Overall left vote: 52%
Parisi: 7.7%


Maule



From now on this will start to get boring map-wise since for the next 650 kilometers the map is pure blue. Maule is another region that is trending away from the left. Northern Maule (north of the Maule river) and the regional capital Talca used to be fairly left-wing and dragged along the fairly conservative southern Maule around Linares and Cauquenes. Northern Maule is more prosperous and tends to cultivate more valuable crops, such as fruits for exportation and wine, while southern Maule has more traditional agriculture (look, yet another example of more prosperous areas being more left-wing outside big cities). But since 2017 the region has gotten more conservative and unlike, say, the north, this lean has stuck down-ballot.



Provoste won the small Hualañe and Kast took the rest.... Well, in northern Maule, Boric and Provoste split the left vote fairly evenly with 17-20% each with Kast coming out on top generally with 25-30%. In southern Maule, Kast got over 40%. Parisi did very well in the industrial wasteland of Constitución, a coastal city with very nasty contamination problems. There, he got 22%.

Overall right vote: 45.1%
Overall left vote: 41.3%
Parisi: 13.6%

[kaoras]

_{Ñuble in blue, the rest is the current region of Bíobio}

Ñuble



This is Chile’s newest region, split from Bio Bio in 2017 (hence the map above, for convenience) This is the most boring region honestly. It has been conservative since time immemorial.

Boric did very slightly better in the regional capital Chillán (20%)  and Parisi was third in Chillan Viejo (15%), the other part of the conurbation and got second with 20% in Yungay, which has a remarkable tendency of voting almost exactly as the national mean in runoffs. Outside of that, I notice that Kast did much better in the western part of the region, closer to the cordillera, getting up to 40% but was weaker in the eastern part. I don’t know the reason for that, but it seems it has always been more rightist. Provoste ran even with Boric in the rural areas but was unusually strong in the northeastern corner, coming second and close to Kast with over 20% of the vote.

Overall right vote: 49.5%
Overall left vote: 37.9%
Parisi: 12.6%

Bíobio



Oh boy, this region used to be one of the biggest leftist strongholds. The industrial metro Concepción and the coal mining in the Arauco peninsula gave birth to one of the reddest zones of Chile. But the coal mines closed in the 90’s, Arauco province is one of the most affected areas by the violence of the Mapuche conflict and Metro Concepción (Concepción, Talcahuano, Penco, Chiguayante and Hualpen and San Pedro de la Paz) has one of the oldest trends away from the left, dating back to 2005!.

Parisi was really strong in Metro Concepción, tying or beating Boric for second place at 20%. In Concepción proper, however (higher income), he came fourth behind Sichel with 13%. He also was very strong in Coronel and Lota, post industrial and post-coal comunas that used to give 70% of the vote to the left, winning up to 25% of the vote, behind Kast with 29%. Kast lowest results were in Metro Concepción, under 30%, in the interior of the region it was a landslide for him, over 40%, including the city of Los Angeles (42%) where Parisi got second place with 17%. One of the exceptions is the heavily Mapuche and usually rightist Alto Biobío where he got 29% with Provoste and Boric getting 20% each. It seems that mapuche comunas outside the zone of conflict have trended left.

In the Arauco Province (green in the map above), which in 1970 posted the highest vote share for Allende nationwide, Kast got over 50% in most of the southern comunas, heavily affected by violence. In the old coal towns, Kast got stuck in the 30's due to Parisi strong performance. As I have said, the Arauco Coal Basin is the one area of the country that has followed the global trend of post-industrial areas going from the left to the far right. A very strong evangelical presence is also a significant factor. Also of note, Sichel was really weak here, getting around 6%.

Overall right vote: 42.9%
Overall left vote: 38.9%
Parisi: 18.3%

[njwes]

kaoras, just wanted to thank you for all these write-ups! I find myself wiki-ing each region as you post them  

[kaoras]

kaoras, just wanted to thank you for all these write-ups! I find myself wiki-ing each region as you boast them  

You are welcome! This has been very fun but it has taken me longer than I anticipated. I will try to get all the regions before the polls close tomorrow.