By LATIN AMERICAN GEOPOLITICS STRATEGIC CENTER*
The parliamentary composition in the first round and scenarios for the second scrutiny
With all the votes counted and a turnout of 47%, the results of the first round in Chile's presidential elections are: Ultra-right José Antonio Kast leads with 27,91%. Behind him comes the winner of the primary on the left, Gabriel Boric, with 25,83%. Franco Parisi, liberal candidate with an impugnatory speech and atypical campaign – made from the United States, where he lives; did not vote and did not set foot on Chilean soil – he got 12,8%, placing third. The candidate of People's Party did all his campaign on social networks. A court order weighs on him that would prevent him from leaving the country if he ever stepped onto Chilean soil. It is his second presidential election, after finishing fourth in the 2013 election with around 10% of the vote.
Sebastián Sichel, Piñera's candidate, came fourth with 12,79% of the vote, in a technical tie with Parisi. The coalition candidate New Social Pact (the old one concertation, which includes Christian Democracy and the Socialist Party), Yana Provoste, obtained 11,61%, taking fifth place. Leftist Marco Enríquez Ominami got 7,61%.
As for Congress (155 seats in total), the result yielded a distribution of seats different from the order of candidates for presidential scrutiny: The coalition chile can we + (from Sichel's candidacy): 53 vacancies. I appreciate the dignity (by Gabriel Boric): 37 vacancies, of which the majority, 12, belong to the Communist Party). New Social Pact (Ex-concertation): 37 vacancies, of which the majority, 13, belong to the Socialist Party. Cristiano Social Front (from Antonio Kast): 15 vacancies. People's Party (from Franco Parisi): 6 vacancies. The Humanist Party got 3 deputies, independent parties 2 and the Green Party another 2.
As for the Senate, there was a similar behavior: 12 senators for Sichel, 8 for the formerconcertation, 4 for I appreciate the dignity (Boric) and 2 independent.
The extreme harshness of Kast's speech could lead us to think that in a second round, with the objective of curbing the extreme right, part of the conservative vote of Sichel, Parisi and the formerconcertation would go to Boric. Nevertheless, the stage is open.
Participation in this election was identical to that of the 2017 first round (47%). If the trend is repeated, the second round will mobilize around 2% more voters. The plebiscite managed to mobilize 51%. In the heat of the left's extraordinary results in the plebiscite, additional participation in a runoff would benefit Boric.
The vote of the Chilean ideological right continues to have its stronghold in the center-south, where the vote was concentrated in Kast. In the Araucanía region, he surpassed his immediate followers by more than 20 points. In the north of the country, the right has not reached its traditional 40% of the electorate.
Parisi came up with a “strange” candidate, despite having already run in 2013. His campaign on the networks and his anti-establishment speech mobilized part of the discontented vote. Parisi's vote was concentrated in the north, where he won: he was equal in votes with Kast in Arica and Tarapaca, and he swept the most populous region, Antofagasta, with 34% of the votes against 21% for Kast and Boric. In Atacama, he equaled Provoste (24%), surpassing Boric (19%) and Kast (18%).
In Antofagasta, if we discount the vote in Sichel (7%), we can say that about 14% of the 34% of the votes in Parisi came from Piñera voters. The remaining 20% would be former voters of the progressive Alejandro Guillier (who had 24% in 2017). It should be assumed that two thirds of Parisi's vote is progressive and, if he decides to vote, this electorate would lean towards Gabriel Boric.
In a second round it is possible that the votes of Boric and Ominami will be concentrated, reaching 2,35 million. Most of the vote in Sichel and Kast would reunify, reaching 2,76 million. In a second logic of vote distribution, however, two thirds of Parisi's vote (600 votes) and a large part of the former's voteconcertation (815 votes) would be leaning towards Boric, which would likely give him a lead in the second round.
On the left, next to the formerconcertation, would control Congress. With its 74 seats, together with the Greens and the Humanist Party, they would have an absolute majority. In the event of a Boric victory, the formerconcertation will have many resources to condition its policy, from Congress and the Senate.
Kast, in the event of a victory in the second round, would have great difficulty in controlling a Legislature that, even adding the vacancies of Parisi and Sichel, would be 4 deputies away from having an absolute majority. In order to obtain it, he would be forced to break with the former's block.concertation, which would require a step back from their far-right positions.
*Latin American Geopolitics Strategic Center (CELAG) is an institution dedicated to the analysis of political, economic and social phenomena in Latin American countries. It is currently coordinated by Alfredo Serrano Mancilla.
Translation: Pedro Marin for Opera magazine.
