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

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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.

They should name it "Partido por la Democracia Cristiana" to confuse people into voting for them.

Paging all the Italian parties who name themselves and do up their logos just so that those of a certain nostalgic disposition will think they're The DC Continuity Party

There are probably at least six registered parties called exactly Democrazia Cristiana, all of which I assume accuse the others of being fake revisionists unduly appropriating the name of the good ol' party, and most of which have never really had a meaningful existence or support (although Cuffaro's machine in Sicily has posted some impressive results recently). Ironically given the history of the DC, an extremely communist-like pattern of behaviour...

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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.?

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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.

[SNIP]

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).

I am Italian and the middling performance of our left in the poorest parts of the country is well-documented, so all of this is quite familiar. Yet another similarity between us (I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the resemblance between Concertación being born out of the uneasy alliance of PS and DC and The Olive Tree being born out of the uneasy alliance of ex-PCI and ex-DC).

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Pueblo = left, gente = right (see also Uruguay’s Partido de la Gente, which has been sometimes amusingly translated as “Party of the Folk”). Got it.

This linguistic quirk (assuming it is not just a complete coincidence) makes me really curious, I would be very glad if kaoras or Lumine or another native Spanish speaker could tell us more on the usage and nuances of those words.

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Pueblo = left, gente = right (see also Uruguay’s Partido de la Gente, which has been sometimes amusingly translated as “Party of the Folk”). Got it.

This linguistic quirk (assuming it is not just a complete coincidence) makes me really curious, I would be very glad if kaoras or Lumine or another native Spanish speaker could tell us more on the usage and nuances of those words.

Well, "Pueblo" can literally mean "Town", but when used to refer to "the people" it carries a strong leftist connotation. It is also very old-fashioned, it was common usage in politics pre 1973 but nowadays is only regularly used by talkies and by PC and PS when they feel like being performative.

In current politics the most common and favored word is "Ciudadanía" ("Citizenry") which is used by all governments and political forces. It's a bland, innofensive word without the connotations of saying Pueblo.

Gente is a like a more common and less pretentious version of Ciudadanía. It doesn't really have a political connotation and is regularly used by all politicians (and when they feel like they have used Ciudadanía too many times) but it feels like more populist than Ciudadanía in a way is difficult to explain. If PDG wanted to be a serious centrist party a la Amarillos they would be called Partido de la Ciudadanía (Which is also the name of C's in Spain!) but they are all about populism and standing with the people, hence "gente"

In everyday usage, most people say gente, me included. Ciudadanía is a very uppity and official word and Pueblo feels almost explicitly political, though is sometimes used in Sports commentary or to talk about different countries ( El Pueblo peruano, argentino) or indigenous peoples (pueblo mapuche)

Thanks! This is unsurprisingly not too dissimilar from "popolo" and "gente" in Italian - the former doesn't have the additional meaning of town and just refers to people(s), but here too it generally carries a leftist tinge* if it refers to the mass of the people or a group of people, for which the latter is the standard word. On the other hand "cittadinanza" is not notable part of our politicianspeak and the idea of calling a party "partito della gente" seems completely far-fetched and kind of ridiculous.

*I suppose this is somewhat complicated by the fact that "popolare" has long been a favourite adjective of Christian democrats, which has an obvious equivalent in Spain (Partido Popular) but I'm not sure I've ever seen it in Latin America.

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As to "ciudadania", we of course had the centrist to (barely) center-left Ciudadanos (2018-2022) as a political party, a renaming of Andrés Velasco's - the former Finance Minister and 2013 independent presidential candidate in the Nueva Mayoria primaries - party "Fuerza Pública". Rather predictably, it only appealed to centrist liberals in Santiago (the wealthy communes, that is), which as we can all agree are not a major demographic. Never got more than 0,5% of the vote and got dissolved.

I assume this was an (even more failed than the original) attempt to copy the Spanish party with the same name, yes?

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Terribly disappointing (but not all that surprising) result. I am not sure what sort of constitution the new right-wing convention will write but now I have the strong feeling it won't fare much better than the previous text. Much ado about nothing...

Also, I see one candidate for the indigenous seat(s) was elected and the vote was closer to filling both seats than neither. That's quite nice and a surprise in light of what kaoras said here before the election. Was there any significant political difference between the two people running?

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Honestly, the reason I'm not updating this thread is because I'm tired of pretending that a good chunk of this country isn't a basket of morally bankrupt deplorables

As if to drive this point home, one of the soldiers found guilty of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Víctor Jara killed himself today to avoid going to prison.

"Los que hablan de libertad [35% of right-wingers associate this word with the dictatorship] y tienen las manos negras" like he sang.

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I kind of appreciate Chile's consistent commitment to being 44% far right and 56% not (compare the 2021 presidential election and the 1988 plebiscite).

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Intriguing matrioshka of lists on the left, even before getting to their very serious names.