The 2017 elections and the fragmentation of the party system in Chile

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to report the results of Chile’s presidential and legislative elections in 2017 and explore their effect on the party system. It relates the context and suggests that there were three recurring themes that defined both the nomination of the candidates and the tone of the campaign: strong political polarization, two major corruption scandals, and the debut of a new electoral system. The article presents the presidential candidates and their main support bases and describes the central points of the election and the main electoral strategies. It reviews, analyzes and interprets the results of the election, highlighting the unprecedented fragmentation in the party system caused by the political and institutional context of recent years. We suggest that as of 2018 the level of fragmentation in the party system is among the highest in its history. We speculate that henceforth governments will be more flexible than in the past and will seek to pass legislation based on multilateral agreements and negotiation.