Who are the 5 million “mandated voters” and how can they influence Chile’s presidential election?

But who are they and how can they influence the polls?

To understand where these forced voters are coming from, we have to go back a few years. Within the framework of the return to democracy, the country maintained compulsory voting and voluntary registration in the electoral process.

At that time, many adults registered to vote, first in the 1988 referendum, and then in December 1989 in the first democratic presidential election after 17 years of dictatorship.

However, during the transition period, fewer and fewer people participated voluntarily in the electoral process.

In fact, in 2009, 30% of the population over the age of 18 was not registered on the electoral register, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and Chile’s Electoral Institute (Saber).

With the idea of ​​seeking greater representation and attracting new young voters, constitutional amendments were approved in 2012 to make voting voluntary and to automate registration on the electoral register.

This expanded the number of registered voters to approximately 13.5 million people, but the number of participants did not increase significantly. In fact, in the 2013 presidential election, only 6.6 million people voted in the first round and 5.5 in the runoff, the lowest on record.

This number increased in the next presidential election, but attendance remained at an average of nearly 7 million people.

In 2022, the Chilean Congress expanded the register and reinstated the current voting obligation, with everyone over the age of 18 registered by default.

Since that date, the country has had four electoral processes with compulsory voting and automatic registration. Approximately 13 million voters cast their votes in these processes.

With 15.6 million people registered for this Sunday’s election, experts estimate that between 5 and 6 million Chileans will vote compulsorily for the first time in a presidential election.

For these elections, Congress has approved a fine of 0.5 to 1.5 UTM per month for those who do not comply with voting obligations, equivalent to 34,600 to 103,900 Chilean Pesos, or approximately USD 36 to 107.

The magnitude of the changes they represent, which analyst Pepe Ors calls a Copernican variation in Chile’s electoral system, has led experts and politicians from all walks of life to attempt to study the behavior of these voters.

The most repeated is that they are unpredictable, not interested in politics, and therefore do not have a fixed ideological identity.

Juan Pablo Rabin of the Citizen Panel Research at the University of Desarrollo (UDD) has been following this voter for years, so he was able to track some of his qualities over time.

In a conversation with BBC Mundo, he explained that these new voters are proportionately more men than women, younger than adults, and of lower rather than higher socio-economic profiles. lower middle class and lower class.

Similarly, he points out that they will be more present in the country’s rural and periphery areas than in its urban centres.

Regarding his approach to other electoral processes so far, Rabin emphasizes that these are people who have a high level of distrust of institutions and, above all, of those who wield power during elections.

“They have a very strong opposition to those in power, which makes sense given the idea that politics is useless, and that’s why they choose not to participate voluntarily. For some it’s apathy, for some it’s dissatisfaction, for others it’s anger,” Rabin says.

This was evident in the constitutional referendum on September 4, 2022, where a majority of Chileans voted against the proposed new constitution, according to figures from the UDD Citizens Panel.

“Eight out of 10 mandated voters rejected the constitutional proposal. Our numbers show that if they had not participated, the text could have been fully approved,” Rabin said.

Tomás Duval, an analyst and master of political science at the Universidad Autónoma de Chile and academic, added that among forced voters, “there is no longer a common consistency among politicized voters who vote left and always vote left. That is not the case here. This group of people can vote right in one election and left in the next.”

This was evident in the 2024 local gubernatorial election, when a second round of voting was held, he says.

“Combining the first and second votes, the table shows that the Republican candidate (from the right) won the first time, followed by the Frente Amplio candidate (from the left) the second time.”

“That’s why it’s so complicated for the candidates because of the lack of ideological coherence and inconsistency that makes this election so uncertain,” he stressed.

According to various analysts, the compulsory voters also have major concerns about issues such as the rise in violent crime and the insecurity caused by the presence of criminal gangs such as Torren de Aragua. Another issue that interests them is immigration.

Generally speaking, this electorate is characterized by a sense of pessimism about the future.

Rabin asserts that they have little patience when it comes to keeping their promises.

“They don’t value the democratic process, they don’t value consensus, they don’t value conversation as much. They get tired of that. They want change now.”

And now comes the issue that has been worrying candidates and analysts the most in recent months of campaigning. The question was how to get candidates and who to support in elections.

Before we get into the analysis, it should be said that no one can predict how they will behave at the voting booth. However, some movements and trends can be felt.

Special forces and experts have read that people in this group tend to like public speaking. outsider And it’s even tougher when it comes to security and migration.

But also to those who are better known and have risen up as opposition to the current government.

Therefore, analysts’ first intuition is that these voters may prefer candidates on the right over those on the left.

“Those of us who follow voters over time see that they are the ones who change their preferences the most, and they do so among the opposition. Movements beyond (Janet) Hara or back to (Janet) Hara are very rare. Eight out of 10 vote against the continuation of the (Gabriel) Boric government,” Rabin said.

In that sense, alternatives such as populist Franco Parisi and liberal Johannes Kaiser may benefit.

Mr. Parisi has based his entire campaign on the idea that the system is broken, but that ordinary people know how to benefit from it. And while Mr. Kaiser has waged cultural battles on issues like family and abortion, he has also tightened his rhetoric on immigration and national security.

Despite the above, Rabin argues that according to his data, mandated voters still perceive José Antonio Casto as the antithesis of those currently in power.

The founder of the Republican Party was exactly the man who ran against Borich in the last presidential runoff. Therefore, among those who are not interested in or do not follow politics, Kast may emerge as the most well-known opposition to the continuity of his government.

Duvall argues that mandatory voters are only beginning to worry about this Sunday’s election. And the days before the election will be critical to defining those votes.

The analyst also said that forced voters generally do not trust traditional media and get their information primarily through social networks.

In the final stages before the election, candidates seem to be appealing to this world in part through controversial means of communication, as Casto himself spoke behind bulletproof glass at the end of his campaign. Evelyn Mattei released a controversial video aimed at differentiating herself from her rivals and Kaiser himself, repeating that if she became Chile’s president she would pardon people convicted of human rights violations.

All of this is meant to appeal not only to the most committed right-wing voters, but also to some of the millions of people who were once uninterested in voting but will now have to choose a name.

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