Change or Continuity? The Chilean Elections of 2005/2006

Abstract

This article examines the electoral campaigns for the Presidency and Congress in Chile in 2005/2006. It looks at the issues in the campaign and at the candidates, and their relations with the political parties. It concludes that the economic and political advances during the Presidency of Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006) provided a very favourable context for the fourth successive Presidential victory for the Concertación alliance since 1990. Although electoral continuity was very marked, there were new features – not least the election of a woman as President. Bachelet’s election is partly the product of social and political change taking Chile in a more liberal direction, and her campaign promised to extend and deepen social rights in Chile.

Structural cleavages, electoral competition and partisan divide: A Bayesian multinomial probit analysis of Chile's 2005 election

“…Although the positive correlation between Concertación and UDI is at odds with received knowledge about citizens' partisan identities in Chile, it is in line with Angell and Reig's (2006) observation that the RN candidate was disliked by a significant proportion of Lavín's supporters, and might help account for the fact that a considerable percentage of them voted for Bachelet in the second-round runoff against Piñera (Gamboa and Segovia, 2006;Huneeus, 2006). These results indicate that the IIA assumption is violated and that models that impose such condition might produce incorrect inferences about voter choice in Chile's 2005 election (Alvarez, Bowler and Nagler, 2000).…”

“…The left-right ideological dimension plays a key role in terms of popular perceptions of party differences in Chile (Valenzuela and Scully, 1997;Tironi and Agüero, 1999), where there are relatively minor differences between the main political forces regarding fundamental political and economic issues (Scully, 1995;Fuentes, 1999;Angell and Reig, 2006 (2000) and Imai and van Dyk (2005) for a detailed presentation of the sampling algorithm. A general discussion of Gibbs sampling can be found in Gelfland and Smith (1990) and Casella and George (1992).…”

“…It was the fourth Presidential election since Chile's return to democracy, held at a time of continuing economic growth and high popularity of the incumbent Concertación government, and with Pinochet relegated to a marginal role in the national political scene (Bonilla, 2002;Angell and Reig, 2006). Also, for the first time in its history, the two main partners of the Alianza por Chile, UDI and RN, presented independent candidates who adopted relatively different electoral strategies: while Lavín (UDI) adopted an aggressive campaigning style aimed at consolidating the vote among his right-wing supporters, the candidate of the National Renewal Party, Sebastián Piñera, took a more moderate stance, distancing himself from the traditional right and the legacy of the military regime in order to capture the support of centre in view of the almost certain second-round runoff between the candidate of the Concertación and one of the two conservative candidates (Angell and Reig, 2006;Gamboa and Segovia, 2006). Together In order to analyze the relative influence of socio-demographic, ideological and political variables on voter choice at the individual level, we specify and estimate a Bayesian multinomial probit model that explicitly accounts for the multi-party character of the election by letting voters evaluate all competing candidates simultaneously and to 'group' alternatives they consider similar when choosing for which candidate to vote.…”

“…Theoretical and empirical arguments indicate that party identification and vote intention are dynamic concepts influenced by electionspecific circumstances and campaign effects, and that there is no linear relationship between party preferences and actual vote (Franklin and Jackson, 1983;Alvarez, 1998;Hillygus and Jackman, 2003). In the case of Chile's 2005 election, held in a context of declining party identification among the electorate and increasing number of respondents not expressing any vote intention in opinion polls (Frei, 2003), short-term factors such as candidates' campaigning style and the impressive economic record of President Lagos' administration might have played a considerable influence on voters' decisions (Angell and Reig, 2006;Navia, 2006).…”

“…Also, it implies that an Alianza supporter could not see the candidates of the UDI and the RN as substitutes, an assumption that is at odds with the view that coalition labels are meaningful for Chilean voters (Huneeus, 2006;Alemán and Saiegh, 2007) and that might have been particularly inappropriate in the context of the 2005 election, when the declining popularity of Lavín and the better prospects of Piñera in a second-round runoff against Bachelet (Gamboa and Segovia, 2006) might have driven UDI sympathizers to vote for the RN candidate for tactical reasons. The potential for strategic voting in the 2005 election was substantially increased due to the fact that opinion polls close to the election date indicated that a ballotage between Bachelet and one of the conservative candidates was almost certain, and that the contest between Lavín and Piñera for the second place in the first round was very tight (Angell and Reig, 2006).…”