Polls said goodbye in Chile, dividing between right (Kast) and left (Boric)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The polls can no longer be disseminated as of this Sunday in Chile, complying with the two weeks of “blackout” imposed by the electoral law in view of the hot elections of November 21.

The latest numbers from the main pollsters were anything but congruent and split between the two main candidates, the far-right Jose Kast and the left-leaning Gabriel Boric.

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The only common denominator in all the polls is that half of the 15 million Chileans eligible to vote are still undecided and will decide the election at the last minute for one side or the other.

Several polls gave the first place to the leftist Boric, but followed very closely or tied with the ultra-right-wing Kast, while others warn about favorable numbers for the Christian Democrat candidate (center) Yasna Provoste, in a hard-fought third place.

In conclusion, anyone could advance to the second round on December 19 and replace the conservative Sebastián Piñera.

In a campaign paused by Boric’s covid contagion, which forced five of his six rivals to isolate themselves for a week, the polls have been widely criticized in social networks by sociologists and prominent pollsters, who accuse them of manipulating after resounding blunders in their projections between 2019 when the plebiscite, the constituent convention, governors and mayors were voted.

“There is a distortion produced by the mediocrity of politics, a degradation of politics,” economist and pollster Marta Lagos, executive director of Latinobarómetro, tells AFP, explaining the lack of solid and reliable polls.

Today Chile is mired in uncertainty, with a process underway to change the Constitution but without it being clear who will be in charge of leading this new transition, 30 years after the one that forged the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990).

If in October 2019 social discontent exploded against a neoliberal model imposed by the military regime, the presidential campaign has brought to light the rise of a latent far right since then.

“It is like a kind of explosion of authoritarianism, just as the left exploded through the social explosion, now comes the counter-reform, which is otherwise what happens in the great transformations of the countries,” says Marta Lagos.

In her analysis, Lagos recalls that since the end of the dictatorship “that authoritarianism was there”, with around 40% of Pinochet supporters in the 1990s and now it stands at approximately 17%.

The most outstanding options are the young leftist deputy Gabriel Boric for the coalition Apruebo Dignidad -Frente Amplio and Communist Party- and the far-right José Antonio Kast for the Republican Party, whom some call “the new Bolsonaro”.

The latest polls showed a virtual tie between the two. Criteria gave 24% to Boric and 23% to Kast last Thursday and Data Influye on Wednesday gave 32% to the leftist and 27% to the ultra-conservative.

The Christian Democrat Senator Yasna Provoste would be the third option and the liberal independent Sebastián Sichel the fourth, but more than 15 points behind.

“The (current) election was plebiscized and we go back then to 1988” when Chile voted for or against Pinochet’s continuity in a country divided between two antagonistic options, Lagos points out.

The reality, says Axel Callis, analyst and director of TuInfluyes.com, to AFP, is that with the implementation of the voluntary vote in 2012, participation fell below 50% and the young electorate has it in its power to make the difference.

Callis recognizes three groups of voters: those who already voted with compulsory voting and who “always vote”, the young people raised in the voluntary vote who “vote on demand” -1.2 million approximately- and those who do not participate.

“If the young people arrive to vote, Boric is president, but if they don’t and the older ones arrive from (the presidential elections of) 2017 and all the popular base that Kast has goes, Kast is president”, says Callis. Another factor is the undecided, who are between 20 and 50% according to different polls.