Just a 6.19% of the electoral roll qualified to vote (4,884,660 people, including independents and party members) participated yesterday in the primaries that took place in 60 communes and two regions (Coquimbo and Aysén) to define candidates for mayors and governors for the municipal and regional elections on October 27.
Although this was a probability that was feared and despite the fact that yesterday’s participation managed to exceed that registered in the municipal and regional primaries of 2020 (4.37%), the crossed recriminations between political parties and the government for responsibility in the low turnout, marked a large part of the day, where low temperatures and rains in some places did not help to mobilize voters either.
“There was zero information from the State regarding the elections,” the president of the PS had already warned on Friday, Paulina Vodanovic, who yesterday added that he thought “shameful that the State does not invest in promoting a celebration of democracy,” and that there was “a serious breach, on the part of Servel, regarding the lack of dissemination.”
“The level of promotion that the primary had as a resource to resolve a candidacy, as a democratic mechanism, was weak. I think there have to be more demands on Servel to promote the importance of the primaries,” said the helmsman of the Communist Party, Lautaro Carmona, in turn.
In the midst of the controversy, the minister spokesperson for La Moneda, Camila Vallejo, highlighted that beyond the fact that the efforts of the government and Servel to report on this and other electoral processes to come can be reinforced and improved, there is also a duty of the parties and the candidates themselves to “move and enthuse” their adherents.
“The information campaigns adjust to the dimension of the process. We are talking about a universe of no more than 10 thousand militants who could participate, apart from the independents. This, obviously, depends much more on the mobilization that the parties and candidates themselves have to attract people,” Vallejo emphasized.
Although the municipal primaries organized by the right were less than half (20) of those carried out by the ruling party (47), in the concurrent communes, that is, those in which both Chile Vamos and the parties of the government pact called primaries (Puente Alto, La Florida, Peñalolén, Lo Barnechea, Pucón and Futrono), the opposition won in participation.
According to preliminary data available in Servel at the close of this edition, in those communes Chile Vamos added 63 thousand votes compared to 33 thousand for the ruling party.
Regarding the results, in general yesterday the favorite candidates both in the opposition and in the ruling party won.
In Lo Barnechea, for example, the RN Felipe Alessandri (RN) prevailed with 57.41% of the preferences over the UDI Carlos Ward (42.91%); in Puente Alto, the former minister of Sebastián Piñera, Karla Rubilar, surpassed the union leader Erick González with more than 88% and in La Florida, the dolphin of the current mayor Rodolfo Carter, Daniel Reyes, easily surpassed (67%) the independent Janett Fernández (16.7%) and her opponents from the UDI and RN.
In this scenario, RN became the big winner of the primaries within Chile Vamos, while the UDI lost its last electoral bastion in the eastern zone (Lo Barnechea), despite achieving an important victory in independence.
In the ruling party, meanwhile, in Peñalolén, the RD’s letter, Miguel Andrés Concha, prevailed with 51.8% of the votes, over the DC candidate, Ximena Llamin (17.8%), while in Valparaíso The candidate of Social Convergence, Camila Nieto Hernández (37%), defeated the also candidate of the Christian Democracy Guillermo de la Maza.
In Providencia, meanwhile, the also militant of Convergencia Social (President Boric’s party), Macarena Fernández (35.3%), managed to defeat, although by a narrow result, the socialist María Fernanda Villegas (34.5%). .
With these results, in the ruling party the Frente Amplio ended up putting an end to the historic hegemony of the DC in Peñalolén (although Alberto Undurraga’s party celebrated having won in La Granja with Edita Alarcón the socialist letter supported by Michelle Bachelet, Juan Valdés ) and also a hard blow to the PS in Providencia.
In turn, the PC celebrated the victory of Nicolás Hurtado in La Florida with almost 60% of the votes, consolidating that commune as one of the communist electoral strongholds.
In the primaries for gubernatorial candidates, called only by Chile Vamos in the regions of Coquimbo and Aysén, the Evópoli candidate, Cristóbal Julia (41.8%) and the UDI Marcelo Santana (60%), respectively, were the winners.
Despite yesterday’s primaries, neither the opposition nor the ruling party, the definition of candidates for the October elections is one hundred percent resolved. For this reason, it is expected that starting this week the negotiations will be resumed to settle the names of the applicants in those communes where no previous elections were held and there is no agreement to date.
In the opposition, for example, where the Chilean Vamos parties negotiate pacts by omission with Republicans, Democrats, Yellows and the PDG, although it is already clear that Mario Desborde will be the sector’s card to compete for the mayor of Santiago, while Sebastián Sichel will do it in Ñuñoa and Marcela Cubillos in Las Condes, there are still emblematic communes in conflict, such as Maipú, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, Recoleta and Concepción.
Although the situation is clearer in the pact between the ruling party and the DC, at least at the municipal level, where only eight communes remain to be settled, the main struggle remains in the definition of a single candidacy for the governorship of the Metropolitan Region, where From the PC and the Green Regionalists they have raised competitors to the current regional authority, Claudio Orrego.
