Chile: Statistical dead heat between Piñera and Frei

[rabs]

This coming Sunday night, one of these two men, billionaire Piñera on the left and former President Frei will be elected Chile's new leader.


Latest, and only poll after the first round came out yesterday. It is the MORI poll, which bills itself as an independent polling company. Poll was taken nationwide between Jan. 1-9 of 1,200 Chileans. The margin of error is put at 3 percent either way, plus or minus.

MORI's figures show election is a tossup now with Frei having made up a lot of ground in one month and the election now heading for a photo finish.

MORI shows Piñera with 50.9 percent, Frei with 49.1 percent. That is a statistical tie and the 1.8 percent difference translates to a mere 124,000 votes nationwide. There were 6,837, 519 votes cast in the first round on Dec. 13.

The poll was taken before the announcement yesterday by first-round, third-place finisher Marco Enríquez-Ominami that he would vote for Frei, releasing his followers to do the same. MEO got slightly over 20 percent in the first round and it would seem that a majority of those votes would go to Frei. The Communist Party candidate, Arrete, last month said he would throw his 430,824 votes for Frei.

Today, Bachelet said she too would vote for Frei, so with MEO and Bachelet endorsing him, Frei may have gotten another significant boost in the past two days after the MORI poll came out.

The results of the first round on Dec. 13:

Piñera -- 3,056, 526

Frei -- 2,053,514

Enríquez-Ominami -- 1,396,655

Arrete -- 430,824

The Frei, MEO and Arrete figures add up to 3,880,993, in theory almost 890,000 votes more than Piñera got in the first round.

Still, most are expecting that the race will be extremely tight.

So, check in Sunday night to see whether Chile will have a right-wing CEO-president, or a center-left democratic president.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thanks, rabs! I really appreciate this news!

I was feeling rather down about things in Latin America--what with the horrors of the military coup in Honduras, Cristina Fernandez's poor polls in Argentina, possible rightwing gains in Venezuela, the continued militarism and wrongness of Obama policy, and of course the US/EU ruination of Haiti for the last hundred years followed by this natural horror. (Gee, I wonder why Haiti had NO building codes. Not.)

Anyway, THANKS! And do you know what kind of vote counting system Chile has? (Did you know that Diebold & brethren have infested Brazil? Yikes!)

[rabs]

2. You're welcome Peace Patriot

I have been watching the Chilean situation since the first round on Dec. 13, and once Bachelet government spokeswoman Carolina Toha was made the "generalissma" of the Frei campaign, things began to turn around.

You ask about the counting system. Chileans still vote with paper ballots and the tabulation system has not been Diebolded. Because the left has ruled for 20 years, it would have been impossible for Diebold and other dubious U.S. counting systems to have taken root in Chile. (I was not aware that Brazil may be infected with such systems. Hope not.)

You said you were not sure of what had happened in Chile that would allow the election of right-winger Pinera. In 2005 the right split its primary slate between Pinera and a pinochetista named Lavin. Pinera came out on top after a vicious battle between the pinochetista Lavin and the so-called center-right Pinera.

Then Bachelet beat Pinera in a runoff with about a six percent margin.

This year, the Concertacion committed the same mistake of the right four years ago. The candidacy of MEO as an Independent siphoned off 20 percent of the Concertacion vote. Hence the large margin separating Pinera and Frei in the first round on Dec. 13.

But now MEO has thrown his 20 percent support to Frei, as well as the Communist and other small leftist parties (MAPU, the Izquierda Christiana, the Partido Humanista (Greens) and other tiny groups).

All this is why the Concertacion has made such a dramatic comeback in the month since the first round.

The Pineras are crying foul that Bachelet endorsed Frei again today. She said she was gong to vote for Frei because he "is an honest man." That was a veiled slap at Pinera, who has some criminal baggage (he was charged with bank fraud in 1982 and the Pinochet dictatorship let the charges drop).

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After helping to stir up labor and public service problems in Chile, particularly involving the privatization of mass transit in Santiago, the U.S.-led contrivance of governmental and non-governmental organizations, including those connected to George Soros’s Open Society Institute, are clearly favoring the Harvard-educated billionaire right-wing candidate of the Alliance for Chile (APC), Sebastian Pinera, over his center-left main challenger former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. It is a mirror image of U.S. support for rightist presidential candidates in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and other Latin American countries.

Pinera has been linked to a 1982 CIA bank operation in Chile involving the liquidated Talca Bank and money laundering involving Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. During his reign, Pinochet hid millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts, including many in the United States, particularly in Washington, DC’s Riggs Bank, a bank that was closely connected to the Bush family before being acquired by PNC Bank.

Wayne Madsen article (critical of Obama).

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5030.shtml

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Will be away Sunday night, so will depend on you guys to post the results here in the LatAm Forum. Google la nacion santiago, emol (el mercuri0), Telesur, and Telam. They should have the results before the AP, Reuters etc.

[DutchLiberal]

5. Off-topic: Do you know why Christina Kirchner is polling badly?

I was under the impression the Kirchners were quite popular in Argentina.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Presidential rivals neck and neck as Chile goes to polls

The Irish Times - Saturday, January 16, 2010
Presidential rivals neck and neck as Chile goes to polls

TOM HENNIGAN in SantiagoA BILLIONAIRE businessman bidding to be Chile’s first right-wing president since the ousting of dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1990 holds the slenderest of leads ahead of Sunday’s second round, with opinion polls showing his advantage all but evaporating in the race’s final stretch.

Sebastián Piñera won a crushing victory in last month’s first round, beating the ruling centre-left Concertación alliance’s candidate Eduardo Frei by 14 per cent.

But a final opinion poll by Mori on Wednesday gave the airline and television magnate just 50.9 per cent against 49.1 per cent for Mr Frei, well within the survey’s margin of error.

Mr Piñera has sought to capitalise on growing disenchantment after two decades of Concertación rule.

He has run under the slogan of change, and attacked cases of corruption and cronyism that, though minor by regional standards, have increased in recent years.

Mr Frei, who served as president in the 1990s, has been criticised by many in the ruling alliance for running a lacklustre campaign.

He has been unable to capitalise on the popularity of the incumbent Michelle Bachelet, whose approval ratings are more than 80 per cent. This has reinforced the perception among many Chileans that the alliance which oversaw the ousting of Pinochet from power and the country’s successful transition to democracy has now run out of steam.

Though Mr Piñera’s campaign has sought to downplay its origins as supporters of Pinochet, the shadow of the dictatorship still lingers over Chilean politics.

An independent left-wing candidate who polled 20 per cent in the first round and who swore he would not endorse either candidate in the second round this week said he would be voting for Mr Frei.

More:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0116/1224262471485.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Chile vote highlights social divide

Saturday, January 16, 2010
As Chileans Prepare to Vote, Conservative Candidate Struggles in Shadow of Pinochet

Chile vote highlights social divide

The people of Chile are set to vote in presidential elections that will either elect a conservative billionaire or a leftist former president to lead their nation.

The contest between Sebastian Pinera and Eduardo Frei highlights the divide between Chile's rich and poor.

In the capital Santiago, social inequality is visibly on the rise as opportunities for mobility within the class system become increasingly unlikely.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/201011521250533715.html

News video by Lucia Newman.