Two South American results

First Chile, which went to the polls on Sunday for presidential and congressional elections (see my preview here). As expected, the left’s presidential candidate, Communist Jeanette Jara, led in the first round with 26.8%, but with nowhere near enough to look like winning the runoff. She will face far-right candidate José Antonio Kast, who on 23.9% trailed her by about 380,000 votes and will start a strong favorite in the second round on 14 December. (Official results here.)

The fourth- and fifth-placegetters – further-right “libertarian” Johannes Kaiser and centre-right leader Evelyn Matthei, who managed 26.4% between them – have both endorsed Kast. Centrist-populist Franco Parisi, who surprised the pollsters by scoring a strong third with 19.7%, has refused to make any endorsement. But even if his votes flow strongly to Jara (unlikely, since his position is basically anti-establishment and the left has been in power for the last four years), it’s hard to see that being enough.

Assuming he wins, Kast will have a sympathetic congress but not a clear majority. In the lower house, his far-right coalition won 42 of the 155 seats, plus another 34 for the centre-right. The left will have 61 seats and Parisi’s Party of the People 14, with three Greens and an independent. The Senate is a bit better for the right, although (partly because less than half of it was up for election) the centre-right component is stronger: it will have 17 of the 50 seats, with eight for the far right bringing them to exactly half, as against 20 left, three Greens and two independents.

The other country voting on Sunday was Ecuador; not in an election but in a referendum with four questions. All were defeated, with “no” votes ranging from 53.7% to 61.8% (official results here).

Readers may remember that Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, was re-elected in April for his first full term, having initially taken the job in 2023 to fill a casual vacancy. He seems to have delusions of Trumpism, resorting to increasingly authoritarian methods to fight drug trafficking and calling for closer co-operation with the United States. One of the referendum questions was to permit the establishment of foreign military bases in the country, but it could muster a “yes” vote of only 39.1%.

The other three were to end public funding of political parties, to reduce the number of members in the legislature and to convene a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. Noboa’s opponents succeeded in painting all of them as a grab for additional power that would weaken possible resistance to his regime.

Referenda are often a problem for authoritarian governments; they seem to be harder to rig than actual elections. Notable defeats in South America have included General Pinochet in Chile in 1988, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 2007 and Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2016. The president now needs to learn to adjust his governing style to what voters are willing to accept.