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UNCLAS SANTIAGO 000432 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV CI
SUBJECT: CHILEAN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS 101 
 
REF: 08 Santiago 24 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary:  All 120 Chamber of Deputy seats and 18 of the 38 
Senate seats are in play in Chile's congressional elections, which 
will occur in December together with the presidential election. 
Chile's "binomial" system, designed by the Pinochet military 
government, favors the right.  The Concertacion's proposed pact with 
the Communist Party (PC), aimed at garnering a few deputy seats for 
the PC, would ensure PC support for presidential candidate Frei in a 
probable run-off election, but might push some DC voters to vote for 
Pinera in the first round.  End Summary. 
 
Chile's Congress 
---------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) Chile's legislative branch of government is comprised of a 
Senate and a Chamber of Deputies.  Thirty-eight Senators 
representing 19 circumscriptions (as senatorial districts are known) 
serve eight-year terms and 120 Deputies representing 60 districts 
serve four-year terms.  Senators and deputies can be re-elected 
indefinitely and are not required to reside in the districts they 
represent.  Congressional elections occur every four years, together 
with presidential elections.  In this year's December elections all 
120 chamber seats and 18 senate seats are in play.  The remaining 20 
senators will not face elections until 2014. 
 
¶3.  (U) The Concertacion coalition, made up of the Socialist Party 
(PD), the Party for Democracy (PPD), the Radical Social Democrat 
Party (PRSD), and the Christian Democrats (DC), is the governing 
coalition and holds a plurality of seats in both chambers, but does 
not maintain a working majority in either house of Congress.  This 
is in part due to the binomial system (see para 5 and 6) and in part 
due to a series of defections during the last few years that have 
led several deputies and senators to turn independent, to establish 
their own movements (such as Chile Primero), or to join other 
parties like the Independent Regionalist Party (PRI) (reftel).  The 
opposition Alianza coalition is made up of the center-right National 
Renewal Party (RN) and the conservative Independent Democratic Union 
(UDI). 
 
¶4.  (U) In the Chamber of Deputies, the Concertacion holds 57 seats; 
the Alianza 53 seats; the PRI 3 seats; and there are 7 independents. 
 In the Senate, the Concertacion holds 17 seats; the Alianza 16 
seats; and there are 5 independents or representatives of smaller 
parties or movements. 
 
The Binomial System 
------------------- 
 
¶5.  (U) Chile's 1980 constitution -- implemented during the Pinochet 
dictatorship -- put in place the unique "binomial" electoral system. 
 Each coalition or political party presents a slate of two Senate 
candidates for each circumscription and another slate of two Chamber 
of Deputies candidates for each district.  Voters cast ballots for 
one Senate candidate and one Chamber of Deputies candidate.  The 
slate with the most votes earns one of the two seats, with the seat 
being awarded to the candidate on the slate with the highest number 
of votes.  However, a single slate of candidates must outperform the 
second-place slate of candidates by a margin of more than two-to-one 
in order to gain both seats.  As Chile's congressional elections 
have been dominated by two coalitions, in practice this has meant 
that the winning list must receive roughly 66 percent of the votes 
to gain both seats, a process known as "doubling."  Due to 
difficulty of achieving this electoral feat, the Alianza and the 
Concertacion typically each win one seat per Senate circumscription 
and one per Chamber of Deputies district. 
 
¶6.  (U) Because the bar for winning both seats in a district is so 
high -- 66 percent of the votes cast -- a coalition must put up two 
very strong candidates in the same district if it hopes to do so. 
However, with this strategy the coalition runs the risk that one of 
those candidates may be left out in the cold (if they don't double 
the number of votes of their competitors).  Former President Ricardo 
Lagos' (PPD) loss in a 1989 senate race is a famous example of the 
dangers of this strategy.  Lagos' running mate, Christian Democrat 
(DC) Andres Zaldivar, won 31.3 percent of the votes, while Lagos won 
30.6 percent.  Because Zaldivar and Lagos together (61.9 percent) 
did not "double" their opponents' total (32.5 percent), the UDI's 
Jaime Guzman was elected to serve in the Senate with Zaldivar. 
Guzman had received 17.2 percent of the votes to Lagos' 30.6 
percent. 
 
Gerrymandering: Still Marked by 1988 
--------------------- -------------- 
 
¶7.  (U) Senate circumscriptions and Chamber districts were drawn up 
by the military government after the 1988 plebiscite in preparation 
for open presidential and parliamentary elections in 1989.  With 
plebiscite electoral results in hand, they gerrymandered the 
electoral districts to maximize areas that had supported the 
military government in the plebiscite.  Chamber districts are not 
based on population, but in this design, which made the 
vote-per-seat ratio low in rural areas where Pinochet had received 
more support.  The end result: the 20 least populated districts 
elect 40 deputies while the 7 most populated districts -- 
representing roughly the same population -- elect only 14 deputies. 
Many Senate circumscriptions are the same as Chile's regions 
(similar to the U.S., where Senate districts are states), but some 
regions are divided into two circumscriptions. 
 
An End to "Exclusion": The Concertacion Pact with the PC 
---------------- ----------- --------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (U) Electoral reform of the binomial system has been a 
Concertacion proposal since the transition to democracy, but such 
constitutional reform requires a super-majority, and, thanks to the 
binomial system, the Right effectively holds veto power over such 
reforms.  The argument for changing the system is that it distorts 
voter intentions by over-representing the minority coalition and 
excluding third parties, such as the Communist or Humanist parties. 
For this reason, these smaller parties are referred to as the 
"Extra-Parliamentary Left" and their absence in Congress -- the 
Communists and the Humanists receive anywhere from five to ten 
percent of votes when running together -- is referred to as 
"exclusion." 
 
¶9.  (U) Despite the fact that the binomial system gives the Alianza 
a much larger congressional delegation than a single member district 
system would, the Concertacion appears to be comfortable with a 
system it already knows and has not pushed for serious reform. 
(Note: Press reports indicate that it will do so mid-year, though 
any call to change the system at this time will be more of an 
electoral move than a true push for reform.  End note.)  A 
short-term Concertacion remedy for this year's elections is to end 
the "exclusion" of smaller parties by entering into an electoral 
pact with the Communists.  Negotiations between the Concertacion and 
the Communist party are still underway. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶10.  (SBU) Chile's congressional system is not a perfect picture. 
Elected parliamentarians -- even in the lower house, the Chamber of 
Deputies -- represent, and are elected by, vastly different numbers 
of voters, thanks to the binomial system and chamber districts of 
varying size.  As a result, city dwellers, Concertacion supporters, 
and voters for candidates or parties outside the two main coalitions 
are perennially underrepresented in Congress.  Yet there is 
surprisingly little genuine impetus for serious reform -- perhaps an 
indication that the binomial system is one of the Pinochet vestiges 
still too sensitive to truly challenge.  The potential 
Concertacion-Communist party pact would ensure Communist party 
support for Concertacion presidential candidate Frei in a probable 
runoff election.  However, the move could also alienate enough DC 
voters to give Pinera a slight advantage in the first round.  End 
comment. 
SIMONS