El efecto de las predisposiciones políticas y las condiciones sociales en una elección semicompetitiva. Chile 1988

Abstract

Generally, successor plebiscites to define the continuity of a dictator in power are analyzed from the point of view of the competition between authoritarian and democratic elites. Less space is given to the study of public opinion, due to the absence of surveys that the very authoritarian regimes very often prohibit. Thus, the case of Chile is exceptional. The Center for Studies of Contemporary Reality (CERC) conducted surveys prior to the successor plebiscite held in 1988 to decide the continuity of General Pinochet in power for eight more years. Based on this information, we identified the political and social determinants that explained the triumph of the opposition. Through a series of binomial and multinomial models, we verified that the "No" option had greater support among men, young people and people of low socioeconomic status, clearly marking a continuity with the voting patterns for the center-left parties before the 1973 coup d'état. Moreover, we maintain that the "No" option was the preferred one even before the broadcast of television propaganda. Thus, the case of Chile is useful to evaluate electoral behavior models in undemocratic scenarios, identifying the long and shortterm factors that explain political outcomes.