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OO RUEHAO RUEHCD RUEHHO RUEHNG RUEHNL RUEHRD RUEHRS
DE RUEHSG #0027/01 0272015
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O R 272015Z JAN 10
FM AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0594
INFO WESTERN HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS DIPL POSTS
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 SANTIAGO 000027 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV SOCI CI
SUBJECT: With Pinera Victory, Post-Pinochet Voting Trends are Broken 
 
REF: 09 SANTIAGO 947; 10 SANTIAGO 50 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary:  Sebastian Pinera's presidential election 
victory on January 17 signaled the end of Chilean politics 
dominated by the legacy of the Pinochet regime.  The right--whom 
many believed could not win a majority in a presidential 
election--ran an excellent campaign and demonstrated cross-over 
appeal to both Bachelet supporters and Marco Enriquez-Ominami 
voters.  While the Frei campaign did manage to consolidate their 
support in the final month of the election, their efforts were too 
little, too late.  End summary. 
 
 
 
Did the Concertacion Lose, or Did Pinera Win? 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------------- 
 
 
 
¶2.  (SBU) At the Frei rally on election night, Concertacionistas 
with long faces analyzed their first presidential loss.  Christian 
Democrat deputy Jorge Burgos summed up the collective mea culpa, 
saying, "This was more a Concertacion loss than an Alianza 
victory."  Indeed, the Concertacion lost the presidency despite 
President Bachelet's record high approval ratings and Frei's 
history as the presidential candidate elected by the widest margin. 
Progressive think tank director Maria de los Angeles Fernandez 
believed that this day had been coming for some time.  She told 
Poloff January 21 that the Concertacion had been worn out since the 
Lagos administration (2000-6), but that extremely popular president 
Michelle Bachelet was "like an oxygen mask" that allowed the 
coalition to remain in power for an additional four years. 
 
 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Nonetheless, it would be overly simplistic to attribute 
the outcome solely to the Concertacion's missteps.  Conservative 
analyst and former Pinera campaign staffer Jose Miguel Izquierdo 
argues fairly that it is inaccurate to assert that Pinera and his 
team simply had the election handed to them.  Izquierdo declared to 
poloffs January 21 that the Pinera campaign constructed a political 
identity for their candidate based on his openness to dialogue and 
his "new consensus"--the acknowledgement by the right that there is 
a role for the government to play in providing social services. 
Indeed, Pinera ran a nearly error-free campaign, uniting the 
previously fractious Alianza coalition even as he moved the group 
to the center and backed progressive-friendly causes like 
Bachelet's social safety net, civil unions for gay couples, and 
greater access for the day-after contraceptive pill. 
 
 
 
Crunching the Numbers:  Frei Picked Up Steam, But Not Enough 
 
--------------------------------------------- ---------------------- 
----------------- 
 
 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Despite the fact that the three progressive candidates 
won 56% of the December 13 first round vote (versus Pinera's 44%), 
Frei entered the final stretch of the campaign behind.  Frei 
himself had received just shy of 30% of the vote and, as the 
embodiment of political continuity, faced an uphill battle winning 
over supporters of independent Marco Enriquez-Ominami's pro-change 
campaign (Ref A).  (Note:  Communist Party candidate Jorge Arrate's 
supporters, who accounted for only 6% of the vote, were expected to 
back Frei in large numbers.  End Note.)  A well-respected November 
poll asked Enriquez-Ominami supporters for whom they would vote in 
the runoff if their candidate was eliminated after the first round. 
Thirty-nine percent said they would back Frei, 20% would back 
Pinera, 33% would cast blank or spoilt ballots, and 8% were 
undecided.  Yet Frei needed support from 70% of Enriquez-Ominami's 
voters, and all of Jorge Arrate's, in order to overcome Pinera's 
lead and win the election.  Many observers worried that record 
numbers of voters would abstain or cast blank or spoilt ballots, an 
outcome which would favor Pinera but, more importantly, reflect 
that Chileans are fed up with politics in general. 
 
 
 
¶5.  (SBU) In the end, Frei did succeed in capturing many 
Enriquez-Ominami voters, but not enough to win the election. 
 
SANTIAGO 00000027  002 OF 002 
 
 
(Pinera received 51.6% of all votes, compared to 48.4% for 
Frei--see Ref B.)  According to calculations by the El Mercurio 
newspaper, in the second round 64% of Enriquez-Ominami voters 
backed Frei, while 36% voted for Pinera.  At 13%, the percentage of 
registered voters who abstained (despite potential fines for 
failure to vote) or cast null or blank ballots (3%) was only 
slightly higher than in the 2005-6 presidential election. 
 
 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Comment:  Chilean political observers have long asserted 
that Chile has a static electorate.  Large numbers of Chileans 
registered to vote in the 1988 plebiscite on continued military 
rule, but relatively few have registered since then, meaning that 
it is largely the same group of voters that has been choosing the 
country's elections for the last twenty years.  Conventional wisdom 
has been that Chilean voters don't change their political views, 
[with those who voted against continued military rule (56%) 
supporting Concertacion candidates, while those who voted for 
continued military rule (44%) backing Alianza.]  Pinera's 
election--and in particular his ability to win votes from 
progressive candidate Enriquez-Ominami--shows that Chile's voters 
have moved beyond the politics of Pinochet and evaluate candidates 
in light of the current political situation.  End Comment. 
URBAN