The leftist “Union for Chile” coalition emerged as the party that received the largest number of votes on Sunday in the (partial) Senate and House of Representatives elections, obtaining 32.2 and 30.6 percent of the votes, respectively, and 61 seats in the latter, in the elections that took place simultaneously with the presidential elections that placed the coalition candidate, Janet Jara, in the second round.
After almost all the votes were counted, the election, which saw nearly 86 percent participation, according to data from the Chilean Electoral Service (Servil), elected senators for seven of the 16 Senate constituencies and all of the chamber’s 155 deputies.
The ruling party is followed by 25.4 and 23.0 percent in both chambers by the far-right coalition Cambio por Chile, which includes the Chilean Republican Party – led by the second candidate to front in the presidential election, José Antonio Caste – and the National Liberal Party, whose leader Johannes Kaiser is running for president, although he has given his support to Caste in light of the results. In this way, the Republican Party was able to increase the group it led from 15 to 42 representatives.
The coalition of the traditional right-wing Grand United Party of Chile also managed to collect more than a fifth of the verified votes, with about 24.3% in the Senate and more than 21% in the House of Representatives, where it includes 34 deputies, to form a majority with the far right.
In turn, the right-wing People’s Party received 10.5 and 12.0 percent of the votes, respectively, thus obtaining 14 seats in the House of Representatives. For its part, the Union of Greens, Regionalists and Humanists received four percent in the Senate and seven in the House of Representatives, where it will have three representatives, while the other formations did not reach one percent of the votes.
The results also show clear polarization in the presidential results. On the one hand, the far right is outperforming the traditional right, while populism is also on the rise. On the other hand, within the framework of the Pact of Unity for Chile, the moderate left of social democracy – made up of democratic, socialist, radical and liberal parties – has outperformed its partners, the Broad Front of the country’s president, Gabriel Buric, and the Communist Party of Jara.
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