Presidential election in Chile in 2021

Runoff candidates

Presidential election 2021 - runoff election

Boric ( AD )			55.87%
Kast ( FSC )			44.13%

The presidential election in Chile 2021 was the eighth presidential election in Chile since the Transición . The first ballot took place on November 21, 2021. In the runoff election on December 19, 2021, Gabriel Boric won with almost 56% of the vote (voter turnout 55%). At the same time, 27 of the 50 members of the Chilean Senate and all 155 members of the Chamber of Deputies were newly elected. The term of office of the elected begins on March 11, 2022.

Starting position

The current President of Chile is Sebastián Piñera from the right-wing conservative coalition Chile Vamos . In the 2017 presidential election, he won the runoff election with 54.6% of the vote against his challenger Alejandro Guillier from the socialist coalition Nueva Mayoría . Piñera had previously been President of Chile between 2010 and 2014. However, he cannot stand for re-election, as Article 25 of the Chilean constitution does not allow re-election in the immediately following term of office. His surviving predecessors Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle , Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet are also not available for re-election.

Piñera's approval ratings during his 2nd term

In Piñera's term of office from 2018 onwards, the social unrest that has been taking place in Chile since 2019 fell . Triggered by an increase in ticket prices of Metro Santiago de Chile protested from October 2019 up to 3.7 million Chileans for more social equality and security as well as the drafting of a new constitution, as the old constitution from the time of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet comes . However, President Piñera blocked many of the reforms and announced in the meantime that the Chilean state was at war with the demonstrators. Nevertheless, it enabled a referendum to be held on whether a new constitution should be drawn up. At the 2020 plebiscite, 78.28% of the population spoke out in favor of this. In the elections to the Constituent Assembly on May 15 and 16, 2021, Piñera's right-wing conservative coalition suffered another defeat and only achieved about 21% of the vote, which meant that they missed a blocking minority. Piñera's approval rating in the population in 2021 was only around 10–20%.

In addition, Piñera's presidency from 2020 onwards was shaped by the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile . Like other South American countries, such as Brazil or Peru , Chile had to struggle with high case numbers. However, Chile made headlines worldwide due to its well-coordinated vaccination strategy. The country has meanwhile been dubbed the “world vaccination champion”. Mainly the vaccines from BioNTech / Pfizer and Sinovac were used .

Electoral system

There is a two-round system in the presidential election. If none of the candidates achieve an absolute majority of the votes in the first round of voting , the two candidates with the most votes go to a runoff election. Official primaries took place within the coalitions on July 18, 2021.

Candidates

Candidates of the parties and coalitions for the 1st round
		candidate
Apruebo Dignidad	PCCh	Gabriel Boric
	PI
	CS
	RD
	Comunes
	FREVS
Chile Podemos Más	EVO	Sebastian Sichel
	RN
	PRI
	UDI
Nuevo Pacto Social	PS	Yasna Provoste
	PPD
	PL
	NT
	PR
	PDC
Frente Social Cristiano	PLR	José Antonio Kast
Frente Social Cristiano	PCC	José Antonio Kast
Other parties	UPA	Eduardo Artés
	PER	Marco Enríquez-Ominami
	PDG	Franco Parisi

Apruebo Dignidad

The left coalition Apruebo Dignidad emerged from the previous coalitions Chile Digno and Frente Amplio in the course of the election to the Constituent Assembly . There were two candidates for the elections in July 2021: The mayor of the Recoleta municipality Daniel Jadue , who is a member of the Partido Comunista de Chile , and Gabriel Boric , who represents the 28th district from the Región de Magallanes in the Chamber of Deputies. In the primary elections on July 18, 2021, Boric prevailed against Jadue with a good 60% of the votes and was thus chosen as the candidate of the Apruebo Dignidad for the election. With his victory in the primary, Boric was directly admitted to the first ballot.

Chile Podemos Más

In the right-wing conservative coalition Chile Vamos , which is currently the president, there were numerous candidates to choose from, representing widely differing political responses. For the party Evolución Política it turned Ignacio Briones for election, the 2019-2021 Treasury under President Piñera had been. The parties Renovación Nacional and Partido Regionalista Independiente initially agreed on the then RN chairman Mario Desbordes as their candidate in the primaries. From 2018 to 2020 he was MP for the 8th District of the Región Metropolitana de Santiago and in 2020 Minister of Defense under President Piñera. After he was overthrown as party chairman in the course of the internal party dispute over the course of the RN in view of the constitutional process in a narrow primary election in June 2021 and replaced by Francisco Chahuán , who rejects the constitutional process in Chile, he was given little chance of his To successfully maintain candidacy.

At the Unión Democrata Independiente , Joaquín Lavín and Evelyn Matthei were initially available . Both had previously been candidates in presidential elections. In the 2005 election , Lavín achieved 23.22% of the vote in the first round and thus missed the runoff, in the 2013 election Matthei reached the runoff, but was defeated by Michelle Bachelet. However, after Matthei was re-elected mayor of Providencia municipality in the local elections , she gave Lavín the right of way. In addition, the non-party Sebastián Sichel stood for election, who was Minister of Social Affairs and Family under President Piñera between 2019 and 2020 and President of the Banco del Estado de Chile in 2020 . In the primaries on July 18, 2021, the independent sickle prevailed with almost 50% of the vote, followed by Lavín with 31% of the vote. The other two candidates, Desbordes and Briones, each received just under 10% of the vote. With his victory in the primary election, Sichel was directly admitted to the first ballot. The coalition comes under the name Chile Podemos Más .

Nuevo Pacto Social

The Nuevo Pacto Social, formerly Unidad Constituyente , is a coalition of center-left parties. It emerged from the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia . Paula Narváez from the Partido Socialista de Chile is a candidate for the coalition. She was head of cabinet and general secretary of the government under President Bachelet. Other candidates such as Ximena Rincón from the Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Chile or Heraldo Muñoz from the Partido por la Democracia withdrew their candidacy in favor of Narváez. In addition, Carlos Maldonado competes for the Partido Radical , which is also part of the Unidad Constituyente. He was Minister of Justice under President Bachelet from 2007 to 2010. On July 23, 2021, the President of the Chilean Senate , Yasna Provoste of the Christian Democratic Party, also announced that she would also run for the office of President of Chile. As a result, the coalition parties agreed to also hold a primary election in order to be able to go into the presidential election united with a candidate. Unlike the primaries for Chile Podemos Más and Apruebo Dignidad, the Nuevo Pacto Social primaries were not carried out by the national electoral authority SERVEL, but organized by the parties themselves. In the end, Provoste prevailed with a little more than 60% of the votes ahead of Narváez with 26% and Maldonado with 12% and was thus nominated as the winner of the primary for the first round of voting.

Other parties

In addition to the major coalitions, other candidates have expressed their interest in running or announced they will run. For example, José Antonio Kast from the right-wing nationalist Partido Republicano . Participation in the primaries of the Chile Vamos coalition was also in the room. In May 2021, Kast declared that he had collected enough signatures for the candidacy. On August 19, 2021, he registered with the national electoral authority SERVEL as the official candidate of the Frente Social Cristiano coalition . Also Eduardo Artés of the left-nationalist Patriotic Union his candidacy. He registered himself on August 23, 2021. For the Partido de la Gente occurs Franco Parisi on. The economist was already a candidate in the 2013 presidential election , but missed the runoff with around 10% of the vote.

Marco Enríquez-Ominami competes again for the Partido Progresista (as in 2009, 2013 and 2017) . He had received permission from the Chilean Constitutional Court in August to run again in the presidential election; Corruption allegations had been leveled against him. On August 23, 2021, he registered his candidacy with SERVEL. Nevertheless, on September 4, 2021, a regional electoral court declared his candidacy to be invalid. Enríquez-Ominami lodged an objection, received the vote on September 10, 2021 by the Tribunal Calificador de Elecciones (Tricel) and takes part in the presidential election.

Rejected candidacies

In addition to the established parties, the Lista del Pueblo , a left, independent coalition, wanted to nominate a candidate for the presidency. The Lista del Pueblo was only created in the same year in the course of the elections to the Constituent Assembly and surprisingly received the third most votes. In June 2021, coalition officials announced that they would also nominate a candidate for the presidency. On August 5, 2021, it was finally published in various media that the Lista del Pueblo wanted to nominate the union leader Cristián Cuevas . However, this led to disputes within the coalition leadership. Therefore, on August 20, 2021 , an agreement was finally reached on Diego Ancalao , a professor and activist for the rights of the indigenous Mapuche , as a candidate. The latter registered his candidacy on August 23, 2021. However, the candidacy was rejected only a few days later by the SERVEL electoral authority. The reason for this was that he did not have enough supporter signatures to show. It was later found that more than 23,000 signatures had been forged. They should have been appraised by a notary who, however, died in February of that year. Investigations were then initiated against Ancalao and the leadership of the Lista del Pueblo.

In addition to Ancalao, Gino Lorenzini's candidacy was also rejected. The entrepreneur was able to show enough supporter signatures, but less than a year ago he was still a member of a political party, the Partido de la Gente . This violates the terms and conditions for independent candidates.

Primary elections in the coalitions

On July 18, 2021, there was a nationwide election for the candidates for the 2021 presidential election. The candidates for the coalitions of Chile Vamos and Apruebo Dignidad were chosen in one election. The elections were organized and carried out by the national electoral authority SERVEL . All Chileans who were older than 18 years and were either a member of a party of this coalition or a member of no party and were therefore independent were eligible to participate. A total of just over 3 million Chileans took part in the primary elections, which in this respect achieved the highest voter turnout of a primary. Overall, the following result was achieved:

candidate

Political party

Nominated by

voices

% in the coalition

% total

A1

Joaquín Lavín

UDI

Unión Demócrata Independiente

416,604

31.08%

13.26%

A2

Ignacio Briones

EVOP

Evolución Política

131.996

9.85%

4.20%

A3

Sebastian Sichel

independent

660.250

49.26%

21.02%

A4

Mario Desbordes

RN

RN - PRI

131,622

9.82%

4.19%

Votes for Chile Vamos

1,340,472

100%

42.67%

B5

Gabriel Boric

CS

Front Amplio

1,059,060

60.42%

33.71%

B6

Daniel Jadue

PCCh

Chile Digno

693,862

39.58%

22.09%

Votes for Apruebo Dignidad

1,752,922

100%

55.80%

valid votes

3,093,394

98.47%

invalid votes

41,930

1.33%

blank ballot papers

6,080

0.19%

Total votes cast

3,141,404

100%

Official result

Following the official area code of Chile Vamos and Apruebo Dignidad, the Unidad Constituyente coalition carried out its own area code on August 21, 2021 to determine its candidate for the presidential election. Members of the coalition as well as independent voters could take part. The result was the following:

candidate

Political party

Nominated by

voices

% of votes for candidates

1

Yasna Provoste

PDC

PDC - CIU

91,789

60.8%

2

Paula Narváez

PS

PS - PPD - PL - NT

40.161

26.6%

3

Carlos Maldonado

PR

18,941

12.5%

Total number of valid votes

150.881

100%

Official result

Candidate Gallery

The following candidates were eligible for the 1st ballot on November 21, 2021. The order of the candidates was drawn by lot on September 16, 2021 by the electoral authority SERVEL.