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Chile

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Chile

Constitution President Michelle Bachelet National Congress Senate Chamber of Deputies Political parties Elections President: 2005–2006, 2009 Legislature: 2005 Regions Provinces Communes Foreign relations

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Chile holds nationwide presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. Presidential elections elect a president, who serves as chief of state and head of government for a period of four years (six years between 1994-2006 and before 1973). Parliamentary elections elect 38 senators (two for each constituency) and 120 deputies (two for each constituency). Municipal elections elect one mayor and a number of councilmen per municipality.

Contents 1 Voting system 1.1 Presidential 1.2 Parliamentary 1.2.1 Examples 1.3 Municipal 2 Latest elections 2.1 Presidential election, 2005–2006 2.2 Parliamentary election, 2005 3 Past elections and referendums 4 See also 5 External links

The President is both chief of state and head of government and is directly-elected nationwide by absolute majority. If no candidate obtains such majority, a runoff between the two most voted candidates is held.

Chile's bicameral Congress consists of a Chamber of Deputies (lower house) and a Senate. The country is divided into 60 constituencies for the lower house and 19 for the Senate. Each constituency elects two representatives.

For parliamentary elections political parties may run alone or grouped with other parties, forming a "pact." Each pact or off-pact party may submit up to two candidates per constituency. Independent candidates running on-pact or off-pact are also allowed. Each off-pact party and pact are a "list," and each off-pact independent candidate is a "nominee." Both candidates from the most voted list in each constituency are elected only when their votes exceed twice the amount of the second most voted list or nominee. If this fails, then the two most voted lists or nominees obtain one seat each. Within a list, the seat is awarded to the most voted candidate of the two.

The system has been much criticized, in part due to the difficulty that the most voted list can exceed twice the amount of votes of the second most voted list, opening up the possibility for a candidate of the second most voted list to be elected with a smaller percentage of the vote than that of the overall second most voted candidate. This has resulted in an almost evenly divided Congress between representatives of the governing Concert of Parties for Democracy (CPD) and of the right-wing Alliance for Chile (APC), and negating representation to candidates of the extreme-left parties within the Together We Can Do More (JPM) pact.

This system was established by the military dictatorship that ruled the country until 1990, replacing the previous proportional system. Some view this system as undemocratic, while others say it has given the country stability. In April 2007, president Michelle Bachelet sent a bill to Congress to reform this system, so that 20 additional seats in the Chamber of Deputies are elected under the rules of a proportional system, in which parties or coalitions obtaining over 5% of the votes are guaranteed representation in Congress.

In this example, List A does not "double" List B in total votes, therefore the elected candidates for Constituency X are Candidate A from List A and Candidate A from List B, even though the unelected Candidate B from List A obtained more votes than the elected Candidate A from List B.

This means that unless a list obtains an overwhelmingly large majority, it can only aspire to win 1 seat per constituency.

Constituency X

List	Candidate A	Candidate B	Total	Result
A	35%	30%	65%	1 seat
B	20%	13%	33%	1 seat
C	1%	1%	2%	—

The reverse may also happen, that is, that a candidate is so strong that it helps a much weaker fellow list candidate gain a seat too.

In this case List A "doubles" List B, therefore its two candidates are elected, regardless of the fact that Candidate B of List A actually came out in fourth place, below both candidates from List B.

Constituency Y

List	Candidate A	Candidate B	Total	Result
A	60%	5%	65%	2 seats
B	25%	7%	32%	—
C	2%	1%	3%	—

In municipal elections, one mayor is elected per municipality by a simple majority, while councilmen seats (ranging from 6 to 10, depending on the number of electors in each municipality) are decided using the D'Hondt method.

Main article: Chilean presidential election, 2005–2006

e•d Chilean presidential election results

Candidates and nominating parties	Votes 1st rnd.	%	Votes run-off	%
Michelle Bachelet Jeria - Socialist Party of Chile/CPD	3,190,691	45.96	3,723,019	53.49
Sebastián Piñera Echenique - National Renewal	1,763,964	25.41	3,236,394	46.50
Joaquín Lavín Infante - Independent Democratic Union	1,612,608	23.23	-	-
Tomás Hirsch Goldschmidt - Humanist Party/JPM	375,048	5.40	-	-
Total valid votes	6,942,041	100	6,959,413	100
Null votes	180,485	2.5	154.972	2.16
Blank votes	84,752	1.18	47,960	0.67
Total votes (Turnout 87.67% / 87.12%)	7,207,278	100	7,162,345	100
Total voters enrolled	8,220,897		8,220,897
Source: Tricel [1] (1st rnd.) / Tricel [2] (PDF) (runoff)

Main article: Chilean parliamentary election, 2005

e•d Chilean parliamentary election results

Coalitions and parties		Chamber of Deputies			Senate
		Votes	%	Seats	Votes (2005)	% (2005)	Seats 20051	Seats 20012	Total
A	Independent Regional Force (Fuerza Regional Independiente)	77,213	1.17	1	30,344	0.63	0	0	0
	-National Alliance of Independents (Alianza Nacional de los Independientes)	20,191	0.31	0	13,076	0.27	0	0	0
	-Regionalist Action Party of Chile (Partido de Acción Regionalista de Chile)	26,698	0.40	1	no candidates
	-Independents List A	30,324	0.46	0	17,268	0.36	0	0	0
B	Concert of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de Partidos Por la Democracia)	3,417,207	51.76	65	2,658,998	55.73	11	9	20
	-Christian Democrat Party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano)	1,370,501	20.76	20	1,418,089	29.72	5	2	7
	-Party for Democracy (Partido por la Democracia)	1,017,956	15.42	21	512,296	10.73	1	2	3
	-Socialist Party of Chile (Partido Socialista de Chile)	663,561	10.05	15	576,045	12.07	4	4	8
	-Social Democrat Radical Party (Partido Radical Socialdemócrata)	233,564	3.54	7	114,515	2.40	1	1	2
	-Independents List B	131,625	1.99	2	38,053	0.79	0	0	0
C	Together We Can Do More (Juntos Podemos Más)	488,618	7.40	0	286,074	5.99	0	0	0
	-Communist Party of Chile (Partido Comunista de Chile)	339,547	5.14	0	104,687	2.19	0	0	0
	-Humanist Party (Partido Humanista)	102,842	1.56	0	69,927	1.46	0	0	0
	-Independents List C	46,229	0.70	0	111,460	2.33	0	0	0
D	Alliance for Chile (Alianza por Chile)	2,556,386	38.72	54	1,777,290	37.25	8	9	17
	-Independent Democrat Union (Unión Demócrata Independiente)	1,475,901	22.36	33	1,028,925	21.56	5	4	9
	-National Renewal (Renovación Nacional)	932,422	14.12	19	515,185	10.79	3	5	8
	-Independents List D	148,063	2.24	2	233,180	4.88	0	0	0
Independent (off-pact)		62,387	0.94	0	18,275	0.38	1	0	1
Total valid votes		6,601,811	100.00	120	4,770,981	100.00	20	18	38
Source: Tricel via Interior Ministry 1 Only 20 out of 38 seats were contested in this election. 2 These 18 seats were contested in the 2001 election.

v • d • e  Chilean presidential elections 1826 · 1827 · 1829 · 1831 · 1836 · 1841 · 1846 · 1851 · 1856 · 1861 · 1866 · 1871 · 1876 · 1881 · 1886 · 1891 · 1896 · 1901 · 1906 · 1910 · 1915 · 1920 · 1925 · 1927 · 1931 · 1932 · 1938 · 1942 · 1946 · 1952 · 1958 · 1964 · 1970 · 1989 · 1993 · 1999–2000 · 2005–06 · 2009  Chilean parliamentary elections 1811 · 1818 · 1823 · 1824 · 1825 · 1827 · 1829 · 1831 · 1834 · 1837 · 1840 · 1843 · 1846 · 1849 · 1852 · 1855 · 1858 · 1861 · 1864 · 1867 · 1870 · 1873 · 1876 · 1879 · 1882 · 1885 · 1888 · 1891 · 1894 · 1897 · 1900 · 1903 · 1906 · 1909 · 1912 · 1915 · 1918 · 1921 · 1924 · 1925 · 1930 · 1932 · 1937 · 1941 · 1945 · 1949 · 1953 · 1957 · 1961 · 1965 · 1969 · 1973 · 1989 · 1993 · 1997 · 2001 · 2005  Chilean referendums 1925 · 1978 · 1980 · 1988 · 1989

• Electoral calendar
• Electoral system

• Archive of recent elections (Chilean Ministry of Interior)
• Archive of past elections
• Chile's Electoral Service (Servel)
• Adam Carr's Election Archive

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