Chilean Elections and General Discussion. Municipal and Regional elections, October 27th, 2024

[kaoras]

New Thread for Chilean Political Developments and possible new constituent elections.

PS-PPD are proposing this roadmap for a new constituent process (copied shamessly from Ex Ante, a very good right wing newspaper for anyone interested)

That Congress establishes the mechanism and term of a new Constitutional Convention, without the need for a new "entry" plebiscite.
The Constitutional Convention must be 100% elected, in a new election to be held in November, with compulsory voting.
The new Convention must work on the basis of the deliberation of the processes promoted by Bachelet in 2016, the reception of proposals for the Convention and the text of the proposal for the Convention, so that the new Convention enters directly into the normative debate .

The term of work of the new Convention must be a maximum of 6 months and that its proposal be submitted to an exit plebiscite, to be held one month later, for a new constitution to be ready in time for 50th anniversary of the Coup of 1973.

The new Constitutional Convention should be constituted by 100 members elected in a national election, with the following requirements:

Nationwide closed party lists that can include independents and with zipper lists to ensure gender parities.
The lists must be constituted by candidates from at least 10 different regions and no more than 35% of members of the lists can be from a single region.
Indigenous seats must be supernumerary (added to the 100 of the national lists) and determined by the number of people that participate in the indigenous electoral roll, not according to census criteria.

.

[kaoras]

After Delpín resignation as president of the DC, 600 members are asking for the resignation of all the leadership team (which includes both the Approve and Reject camps). Yasna Provoste said that she won't leave the mandate for which she was elected.

The grassroot anger against the pro-Reject members continue unabated despite the results, with 152 comunal leaders asking for the expulsion of deputy Eric Aedo, senators Ximena Rincón and Matías Walker and ex conventional Fuad Chahín.

At this point, the best scenario for the DC is to split, only way to become a coherent(s) party(ies) again.

[kaoras]

Interesting. So the shift away from PS etc was a elite-driven thing while the base stayed more 'traditional' (like the people with Bachelet tchotchkes you once talked about ). Or is the party just split down the middle?

I've got the impression from the last internal election that their militant base is very divided, but the left faction is very loud at grassroot level. The problem with the DC is that it seems they no longer have a base outside being a network of politicians with individual popularity and what remains isn't very in touch with their membership. For example, in the last parliamentary election the Aysén branch of the DC deselected deputy Miguel Angel Calisto for their conservative leanings and occasional support for Piñera government, but were overruled by the national leadership, which was a good decision because Calisto was the most voted candidate in Aysén with 25%.

The DC base according to research are self-id centrists, catholics and rural voters, all segments that have been shrinking but that doesn't fully explain their fall from 30 to 4% in the last 30 years. DC leadership has usually interpreted their decline as a sign they must become more centrists (hence the shift away from PS) but that has failed miserably. If you look at elections results, you notice that DC collapses in the short term usually correlate with rightist or miscellaneous centrist advances, but in the long term the left recovers that share but the DC stays down. The DC has gone from having almost half of the total leftists vote to less than 10% of it:

[kaoras]

You won't believe which parties are analyzing "postponing" the new constitutional process because of the "economic situation". Who could have seen this coming from the Right... One part of me wants that they really refuse to change the constitution, this country fully deserves it

Ah, the communist are annoyed at Boric because of the reshuffle and the failed appointment of their subsecretary of interior (which was given a consolation price on the regional development subsecretary). They don't want to repeat the experience of the second Bachelet government which they feel like drifted too much to the center.

Also, Rojo Edwards resigned to the presidency of the Republican party because of tension with Kast that I didn't really understand and one of their deputies joined the PDG caucus because she said that the party was a "sect"

[kaoras]

RN senators (and it seems that most of the Right) will oppose a new Convention, instead they want Congress to name an "expert committee".

So this will end up either with no change at all or the same undemocratic way of all the previous constitutions in Chile.

[kaoras]

RN senators (and it seems that most of the Right) will oppose a new Convention, instead they want Congress to name an "expert committee".

So this will end up either with no change at all or the same undemocratic way of all the previous constitutions in Chile.

To be fair, the sentiment appears to be more widespread than one would imagine, it's reported even center-left parliamentarians are wary of another convention and the polls, surprisingly, suggest potential support for a committee of experts and/or distrust of repeating the same process, perhaps out of fatigue.

Personally I don't think it's the right way to go - and others in the right have expressed it as such -, but there are motives to think even the public is not yet convinced the Convention 2.0 is necessarily the best option. It's not like an expert committee automatically means "no change", though I think it's a given any future constitutional document is going to be far more grounded in reality compared to what was voted on Sunday.

Expert committee polls well because is an undefined thing where people can put their best hopes (just like the convention full of independents once upon a time). I oppose that out of democratic principle and because is not easy to exactly determine what counts as an expert. Is not even a guarantee to be an improvement, two of the most hated constituents, Atria and Bassa are definitely experts by almost any definition of the word. _{Also, this country fully deserves a new convention full of PDG "experts"}

Some people on the left are having second thought because they think (correctly) that they will have worse results than in the last elections, but that is just opportunism. And let's be real, the chances of the right supporting any non cosmetic change are just 0, in the convention they voted against everything they said they now totally support like the end of the subsidiary state.

[kaoras]

In the morning there appeared to be an accord on some initial points of the new process (like a 100% elected convention not called convention supported by an expert committee) but the right in the afternoon said that they haven't agreed to anything...

In any case, the "center-left" for Reject is making noises about making a new party. Ex PR president Carlos Maldonado quit the PR saying that he hoped to join a "new party". Other figures that are rumored to create/join this new force are Mariana Aylwin, Felipe Harboe, Ximena Rincon and Fuad Chahín

[kaoras]

In the morning there appeared to be an accord on some initial points of the new process (like a 100% elected convention not called convention supported by an expert committee) but the right in the afternoon said that they haven't agreed to anything...

In any case, the "center-left" for Reject is making noises about making a new party. Ex PR president Carlos Maldonado quit the PR saying that he hoped to join a "new party". Other figures that are rumored to create/join this new force are Mariana Aylwin, Felipe Harboe, Ximena Rincon and Fuad Chahín

Amarillos por Chile also wants to create a new party and very likely it all ends ups being a single entity.

Chile Vamos didn't assist to today meeting to negotiate the new constituent process accusing the government of interference. In reality, the press has reported that it was because of heavy internal divisions regarding the initial accords they had eached and that's why they backtracked.

[kaoras]

Constitutional talks will resume this Friday. Chile Vamos has several "red lines" including an expert committee that puts "boundaries" for the new constitution such as an unitary state and "freedom" of choice in health and education.

[kaoras]

Also, Amarillos x Chile will start the process of becoming a formal party tomorrow (no idea if they are going to keep the name or go with something less cringe-worthy). Among their main figures will be writer Cristián Warnken and a plethora of "autocomplacientes" ex-Concertación figures like Mariana Aylwin, Gutenberg Martínez (ex DC) and people close to former president Ricardo Lagos.

However, other figures of the center-"left" for reject such as DCs Ximena Rincon, Matías Walker and ex PR Carlos Maldonado are not going to join and instead will make a party of their own. They criticize Amarillos for being a project of "Santiago elites" (lol), not even they being comfortable with Mariana Aylwin and Gutenberg Martínez (lmao) and because Amarillos already has drafter their principles and structure so they wouldn't get much influence (the real reason probably)

So, for electoral politics in the future the real question if they ally with the right or do a new centrist coalition together. The disaster of Sumemos in the 2017 elections could make that option less appealing but they may feel confident enough.

[kaoras]

Latest CADEM asked about party sympathies.

PDG 11%
FA 10%
UDI-RN-EVO (Chile Vamos) 9%
PS-PPD-PR (Socialismo Democrático) 8%
Partido Republicano 7%
Amarillos 7%
DC 5%
PC 5%
None 38%

Government left (FA-SD-PC) 23%
Right Wing (CV-REP) 16%
"Centrists" (DC-Amarillos) 12%
PDG 11%

DC and Amarillos technically/maybe count themselves as part of the "center-left" and PDG should be a category by itself, honestly (though in Congress they vote more closely with the right)

By political camp it is:



PDG is a true catch all (along with the DC lol) while Amarillos is drawing exclusively from centrists, without denting the left.

[kaoras]

Ximena Rincon and others DCs are toying with the name "Partido Demócrata" (Democratic Party) for their new Party. Would be pretty funny if Chile ended up having both democrats and republicans.

[kaoras]

Sooo until I watched this video I didn't realize the vote had been compulsory. How many of these usual non-voters who were forced to the polls voted against the constitution and who made the decision for the vote to be mandatory or was that required for a new constitution?

It was part of the accord of 2019 that started the process and was signed by all parties of the time except the communists.

The idea probably came from the left though. There is a sector of the left, specially the FA (not so much in SD) that is so drunk in their own kool aid that they genuinely thought that a vast majority wanted all of their agenda, they just didn't vote.

It wasn't really that hard to guess that most people that never voted would likely go with reject because of deep distrust in politics in general and Boric unpopularity. I warned about that a couple of times in fact.

FA and PC in particular, needs to understand that leftwing people are only a third of the country, and the people that usually puts them over the top have a myriad of reasons but in general tends to be populist and not really ideological. That's why Parisi caused such havoc in the north in the last elections.

[kaoras]

Quich roundoup:

Party Politics: Independent deputy elected on PR list's Andres Jouannet joined Amarillos (leaving the government with a single deputy in all Araucanía) while RN deputy Erica Oliveira will join "Sentido Común" (PRI v 3 or 4.0). Acción Humanista, PH split of those unhappy with Pamela Jiles' protagonism was re-legalized, though I wonder why they just rejoined PH since Jiles left the party.

Amarillos also said that their ideology was "reformism centre", you know... Spanish PP ideology

General News: Today the goverment finally ended the mask mandate and the mobility pass. The Government coalitions are also split over the trade treaty TPP11 (oh, the memories). SD wants to pass it while AD doesn't. Most likely will pass with the right support but for now AD managed to stall the voting. Very dumb that this has been the goverment focus after the plebiscite.

Constitutional talks: There have been several meetings in Congress, with the discussion focused on the "edges" of the new constitution, ie things that a new convention won't be able to change and in the electoral system.

[kaoras]

The Constitutional discussion has continued and while it is funny I haven't had much time lately to cover all the petty fights, so I'll likely just post the final accord when they are done with it.

But I just couldn't not comment on the fact that the DC this time really is entering on existencial crisis mode (maybe for real this time!). Metropolitan Region Governor Claudio Orrego resigned his membership citing the all-consuming factional infighting and other DC's governors in Maule and Los Lagos are also considering quitting the party. This means that the resignations are now cutting beyond the latest line of factional divide, because all of DC governors, Orrego included, supported the Approve option in the plebiscite. DC ex-presidents gathered signatures to call an extraordinary Party Congress but the directive is maneuvering against it.

Also, given that I'm already here, if you want more insight about why Boric has struggled so much, look no further than the fact that their agenda priority after the plebiscite has been passing the TPP-11, which of course has deeply divided the government parties. Of the 20 senators of SD and AD, just 4 approved the treaty. The DC was also divided with 2 in favour (Rincon and Walker) and 2 against (Provoste and Huenchumilla). The TPP passed with votes from the opposition.

[kaoras]

Bobo Boric condemns the October protesters

In his speech, Boric stated that, “The social uprising was fertile ground for the expansion of destructive violent behavior, which has left victims and aftereffects. We must say this unequivocally no matter our political leanings.” He also points out that “the violence turned against the very causes of the uprising by producing a growing wave of rejection in society”.

…

“This type of violence is not innocent; it causes harm, encourages hatred, promotes criminality and ends up promoting a return to an anti-democratic past”, Boric noted, trying to blame the protestors for the repressive policies of the State, which he now leads and which is carrying out a violent campaign against migrants and the indigenous Mapuche people.

While proclaiming himself as part of the “Left,” he puts forward what’s clearly a right-wing policy: “We on the Left denounce more categorically than anyone these behaviors. We must confront them without hesitation, denounce them and punish them”.

…

“neither is it acceptable to attack police officers, who are, after all, State officials who are performing a service entrusted to them by the democratic system,”

I find most of Boric's political movements extremely dumb but the stupidity of these takes are really something else. No wonder you have so many colourful ideas about LatAm politics if these are your sources.

[kaoras]

BTW, Rincón and Walker officially quit the DC and the presentation of the new "Democratic Party" is due for next week according to the press.

Los Lagos regional governor, Patricio Vallespín, also left the party but given that he supported Approve is unlikely to join Amarillos nor democrats.

There were also internal elections in EVOPOLI and Convergencia Social (Boric's party). In EVOPOLI the more liberal faction of former minister Gloria Hutt won 55% against Cruz Coke, close to Felipe Kast. (not JAK, the faux ""liberal"" one)

In Convergencia Social, deputy Diego Ibáñez won with 75% but I don't know much about the stakes there. He seems to want closer coordination with PS and more moderate.

[kaoras]

Constitutional talks have reached a stalemate with no accord in sight. They can't agree neither on the electoral system nor on the "edges" (topics that the new convention could not touch, which besides defeating the point of a convention, the right wants to keep all the subsidiarity of the current constitution). Gee, I wonder who could have seen this coming.

On political news, there was a long running drama about the presidency of the chamber of deputies. According to the administrative deal of the Left+PDG, now it was the turn of communist Karol Cariola, but PDG and several rogue deputies changed their minds (because Cariola was one of the leading figures of Approve) and seem poised to give control of the chamber to the right. Today PC rescinded Cariola candidacy, so is unclear what will happen now.

Ximena Rincón (ex-DC), Patricio Walker (ex-DC), Carlos Maldonado (ex-PR) and other ex-Concertación figures officially launched their new party called "Demócratas" with all the inane and bland enlightened centrism, indistinguishable from Amarillos. Claudio Orrego, governor of the Metropolitan Region is also looking to found a new Party, maybe with Patricio Vallespín and other ex-DCs that weren't part of the right wing. _{Let's ignore for a second that Orrego in 2013 represented the conservative wing against Ximena Rincón from the left in internal primaries. Rincón change is all about her hating Yasna Provoste for "stealing" his spot on the presidential ballot}

DC-meltdown update:Senator Francisco Huenchumilla has said that if the new party Congress results in a rightist takeover of the DC, he will also quit the party. So, at this point the question is whose faction gets to keep the empty shell of the party while everyone else leaves

Finally, Boric is going to present the pension reform, his first relevant piece of legislation (yes, it took this long, that's why he didn't have a honeymoon). The main points are changing some of the inner workings of the AFP (Pension administration funds, the private entities in charge of pension in Chile) changing their names and creating a public entity to compete with them. It would also create a 6% payroll tax for employers that would go to a common fund, while keeping the current 10% for individual accounts.

Overall, a very reasonable reform that is going to be extremely unpopular and has 0 chance of passing Congress. Boric also has seen his approvals fall in recent weeks from 35 to 25% because he pissed leftwingers with the approval of the TPP11

[kaoras]

Also, before I forget again, the plebiscite results according to the socioeconomic estrata of the comunas (5 being poorer and 1 richer) Bear in mind that 2021 turnout seem to be switched up (richer comunas should have the higher rate of turnout)


Overall, Approve lost more relative to Boric in the middle classes while holding slightly better with lower and upper clases. Approve had the hardest loss in the third quintile with -21,2% while "only" losing -17,6% among the rich and -15,2% among the poor. All this with wildly different turnout product of compulsory voting. The terror campaign appears to have been more effective on the middle classes that felt that had more to lose (as in, actually having homes that the evil communist were going to expropriate)

Also, keep in mind that in Chile the usual voting patterns are an inverted U, with the left being stronger with the middle class, so this lineal pattern is unusual.

[kaoras]

Also, keep in mind that in Chile the usual voting patterns are an inverted U, with the left being stronger with the middle class, so this lineal pattern is unusual.

Is the reason for this pattern that the poorest communes are disproportionately rural areas in Araucanía, Bío Bío etc.?

Yes, but that's not the whole story. Is very well documented that the Chilean Left, since its inception in the saltpeter offices in the 1920's, has been a project of the educated working classes (nowadays what constitutes the middle class). A book in electoral geography from 1950's noted that support for the left was stronger in provinces with higher income, higher unionization rates, and better living standards.

To quote myself:

There isn't much research into that (or any electoral topic outside abstentionism tbh). Some researchers said that support for the left among the working class pre 1973 was actually dependent on them believing that social classes existed, basically, having class consciousness, and that this only happened in more educated and prosperous areas. The relationship between leftism and better living standards is really old, the guy from 1954 who I cited in the last page already noted that back then.

Anecdotally, I have noted that more militantly left wing people tend to be very aspirational, wanting to get ahead in life and putting a lot of value in education. And when they do actually get ahead they keep their voting patterns because the right is repulsive to them at a personal and cultural level.

Honestly the FA pattern of support is the inverted U in steroids,   their best results are among the "new" middle class that used to be poor in the 80's and 90's, with the difference that, unlike the Concertación, they also tend to struggle with the urban poor. But even the Concertación had this pattern, a paper from 2001 showed that the support for the Concertación and the right was tied among unskilled workers but the Concertación beat the right 3-1 among qualified workers.

Graphic in question


Not only that, if you look at provincial results in presidential elections from 1938 to 1973, you can see that the expansion of suffrage actually hurt the left in some places. In Magallanes, which never had an historic aristocracy and the people that could vote in 1938 where mainly educated industrial workers, the leftist candidate got 88% of the vote. Allende in 1970 got only 47% there (still way above his national average)

There's some paper to be wrote about how the Chilean left has always been the political option of the "social climbers" and "those who get ahead" through education. Anecdotally, the most fire-breathing leftists you cand find in Chile are all from typical middle-class backgrounds (have relatively comfy lives, his parents used to be much poorer but put a lot of effort on their own education or their son's).

[kaoras]

If I'm reading this data right, the richest people in Chile had lower turnout than average? That's fascinating. I'm not aware of any country where that's the case.

The 2021 data is probably inverted. Is fairly clear that rich people voted more. For the plebiscite the differences are very small because of compulsory voting, though I guess the rich are more likely to be away from their polling place. 

[kaoras]

Cadem polled the "totally going to happen any day now" Constituent Elections 2.0

PDG 15%
Chile Vamos 14%
Apruebo Dignidad 14% (7% FA + 7% Communist)
Partido Republicano 9%
Independents 9%
Amarillos 8%
Socialismo Democrático 6%
DC 3%

Right (CHV+ REP): 23%
Pro-Government Left (AD+SD) 20%
Everyone else is basically its own category for now.

CADEM didn't ask for the "outsider left" (Ecologists, Humanists, tankies) which got 10% combined in the last parliamentary election.

[kaoras]

A big meeting of all the pro-goverment parties was held yesterday. The most relevant thing was that they agreed to build a single "Presidential Majority "Alianza de Gobierno" with unified spokesperson, coordination meetings and so on.

It would be set up as a "confederation", Apruebo Dignidad and Socialismo Democrático* will still exists but within that coordination space. It remains to be seen if they will bother to give the alliance a proper name but given how lazy the Chilean left is with those things (SD still doesn't have a logo!) I wouldn't bet on it.

*Wich means, for example, that a party like Convergencia social is inside the Frente Amplio coalition, which is inside Apruebo Dignidad which is now inside the Alianza de Gobierno.

[kaoras]

On political news, there was a long running drama about the presidency of the chamber of deputies. According to the administrative deal of the Left+PDG, now it was the turn of communist Karol Cariola, but PDG and several rogue deputies changed their minds (because Cariola was one of the leading figures of Approve) and seem poised to give control of the chamber to the right. Today PC rescinded Cariola candidacy, so is unclear what will happen now.

Well, the end of this saga was really funny. Over the weekend the right was sure that they had the votes for winning the presidency along with PDG and PR and DC dissidents. The name they put forward was PDG Victor Pino. However, he "didn't generate consensus" among the PDG caucus (allegedly because he was a Mormon which didn't sit well with the couple of evangelical pastors PDG has, same story with some evangelical RN deputies). At the same time, the pro-goverment parties choose Liberal Vlado Mirosevic as their candidate, and the government was able to whip several dissidents.

Sensing defeat, the Right changed their candidate at the last minute for the conservative DC Miguel Angel Calisto, but it was to no avail as Mirosevic was elected on a 77-73 vote.

Even more funny, PDG caucus split in half. Karen Medina (Arauco-Biobio) and Ruben Oyarzo (Metropolitan Region), along with independents Francisco Pulgar (ex-Cento Unido) and Gaspar Rivas (one of the biggest clowns in congress) voted for Mirosevic, while the rest of the party voted for Calisto.

The DC also split in half, with 4 deputies voting for Mirosevic and 4 for their fellow party member Calisto, showing that the DC has effectively stopped functioning as a coherent party.

Now the right on twitter is on full meltdown mode calling PDG traitors and unreliable, ending their short love affair. Hilarious. And the cherry on top is that PDG and Parisi also are in a legal cruzade against meme pages on Instagram that mocked them, causing even more mockery.

Centrist parties try to be cohesive and ideologically coherent challenge (Impossible)

[kaoras]

I did this graphic on Paint to show all the layers of the Matrioshka that is currently the Chilean Left. I only included parties or movements with parliamentary representation, otherwise Chile Digno has like 10 small movements like the Cristian Left and so on.  By election time there always appear or reappear a few hard left /outsider parties, like Partido Igualdad, the tankies and the trots. I also didn't include the DC, Amarillos or Demócratas.

While doing this I noticed that an official looking twitter account of Socialismo Democrático does, in fact, have a logo. And I couldn't find that especific rose design anywhere else, so it seems original and legit.

The Ecologist Party and the Humanists are outside the Government coalition but have 2 and 1 deputy each and usually support the goverment.

Are all those parties necessary? Long term PPD is doomed and the only reason it doesn't merge with PS is because the socialists wouldn't accept anything other than unconditional incorporation into their brand (nothing of "Socialdemocratic" Party, like Lagos proposed once upon a time). There are talks to merge all FA parties into one, but I doubt it will happen. All other ones can all at least somewhat justify their separate existence (except for the Humanist Party and Humanist Action, they should just merge again now that Pamela Jiles is gone)