NEW POLITICAL SURVEY MAITAINS BACHELET’S LEAD

(Nov. 3, 2005) A new survey of 700 Chileans by the Center for Citizen Opinion Studies (CEOC) concludes that Michelle Bachelet, presidential candidate for the center-left Concertación party, could win the presidential race in the first round of voting.

Opinion polls have been fueling the campaign rhetoric in Chile as Bachelet’s right-wing opponents, Sebastián Piñera, National Renovation Party (RN) candidate and Joaquín Lavín, Independent Democratic Union (UDI) candidate, jockey for a higher percentage of the popular vote to force a second round of elections.

After an August poll showed Lavín’s support slipping, the UDI candidate launched his now signatory campaign platform of penal reform. Lavín proposed various initiatives to combat crimes such as shipping Chilean convicts to an island penitentiary and giving police shoot-to-kill powers to help deter delinquency (ST, Oct. 11).

In the most recent poll Lavín’s popular approval ratings have fallen for the fourth straight month, down to 19 percent from his June high of 23 percent. Piñera has been climbing proportionate to Lavín’s slide, with 23 percent of the approval ratings measured in October, up from 17 percent in June.

On the other side of the political fence, Michelle Bachelet has given ground to the far-left Juntos Podemos Más candidate Tomás Hirsch, after Hirsch’s strong presentation at the Oct. 19th presidential debate. The polls show Hirsch climbing up from 1 percent in June to 5 percent in the popular opinion polls.

Some political analysts have pointed to Hirsch’s increase in the polls as a message to Concertación politicians that the political left is unhappy with Chile’s status quo and expect more changes if Bachelet does in fact win the December elections.

Of those surveyed, 20 percent were still undecided as to which candidate they would vote for. Of all those polled, Sebastián Piñera seemed to have the greatest chance of increasing his overall votes with the possibility of winning 26 percent of the national vote.
The survey predicts that after all of the blank and null votes are discarded, Bachelet will win the election with 50 percent, followed by Piñera with 25 percent, Lavín with 19.6 percent and Hirsch with 5.4 percent.