[News] The profile of the quoted District 10: The electoral behavior, the demographics and the names that ring for April

[FNX Magokiler]

The number of candidates who sought a parliamentary seat in District 10 is one of the most obvious signs: there were 46 people to qualify for the eight seats distributed by the communes of La Granja, Macul, Ñuñoa, Providencia, San Joaquín and Santiago. The distribution of seats, after 49% of the electoral roll voted, was almost symmetrical: the left obtained half of the seats, with three quotas from the Broad Front and one from the Socialist Party, and Chile Vamos the other four: two for RN, one for the UDI and one for Evópoli. The votes of the center-left, however, were more, although divided into many lists: between Convengencia Democrática, La Fuerza de la Mayoría and the Frente Amplio they added 249 thousand votes, while Chile Vamos obtained 168 thousand in a single list.

It was the decision of one of the most sought-after districts at the national level, one that includes 1,082,408 inhabitants, 15.2% of the total po[CENSORED]tion of the Metropolitan Region. There lies, explains the doctor in Political Science and director of Tresquintos, Kenneth Bunker, its great attraction: "It is one of those that distribute the most seats. They are mega-districts, where many people live, and that obviously means that there are many people to represent" explains to Emol. In the district's communes, the forces are divided at the municipal level: in Santiago and Providencia the mayors are Felipe Alessandri and Evelyn Matthei, both from the UDI, and in Ñuñoa Andrés Zarhi, an independent former RN.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Felipe Delpin in La Granja is a member of the DC and Sergio Echeverría, in San Joaquín, is from the PS. The only independent who won the last elections outside the pact is the mayor of Macul, Gonzalo Montoya. In the run-up to the conventional election that will take place next April, the phenomenon begins to repeat itself: the names of those who are interested in obtaining a place within the district were the first to be known. Today, at least 32 candidates are being considered in the Tresquintos count. Of these, about twenty correspond to renowned figures from politics, past governments, activism or the Chilean cultural and communications world. For all of them, there are only eight places. Younger, more educated and more voters The interest also lies in the characteristics of the po[CENSORED]tion that lives there: it is about voters who vote more than the average. In the first round of 2017, the participation of District 10 was almost three points higher than that of the RM, and one above the national average. In the October Plebiscite, 66,000 more people voted than in the parliamentarians, reaching a participation of 53.92% of the electoral roll. The results in those elections were overwhelming: 78.01% for the Approval option and 79.52% for the Constitutional Convention. As in the entire country, the increase in participation is explained, in principle, by the incorporation of the younger po[CENSORED]tion to the polls, one that is abundant in the district.

 

In effect, the percentage of inhabitants between the ages of 30 and 44 (27%) is higher than that of the region and the country (21% in both cases). For this reason, it is also thought that half of the parliamentary seats were in the hands of young coalitions, with three FA deputies attributable to the figure of Giorgio Jackson and one to Evópoli. Furthermore, the young po[CENSORED]tion has another peculiarity: most of those over 25 years of age have completed higher education, something that is not usual at the national level. In this case, it corresponds to 56.25% of that po[CENSORED]tion, while in the RM it reaches 35% and in the country only 29%, almost half of what is evidenced within the district. Another distinctive feature is the origin of its inhabitants. According to the last Census, 14.99% of the po[CENSORED]tion of the communes of District 10 declared to have been born in another country, more than double the 6.93% who indicated the same at the regional level and more than triple the 4.31% who said the same across the country. It also has fewer inhabitants belonging to indigenous peoples than the rest of the territory: only 8.44%, less than the 12.61% of the country. The first candidates The names already circulate to access the convention, and Bunker assures that "we met them first because they are the districts where people use Twitter, have Facebook, access to the media." "We know them more than the candidates from District 18, for example, because there they respond to a different logic," he explains. What is seen in 10, he assures, is not so different from what is seen in "common and current" elections, although he identifies as a particularity that now there are more people who "are not traditional politicians" and who appeared "expert constitutionalists. ". Despite the abundance of lawyers in Congress, they are people who, unlike these candidates, are not dedicated to exercising their careers.

Being a district that accumulates a large number of universities and educational centers, it indicates that it is possible that academics and intellectuals appear on the ballot. The examples are visible: the academic from the U. Adolfo Ibáñez, Cristóbal Belollio and the one from the U. de Chile, Carlos Ruiz; the constitutionalists Patricio Zapata and Fernando Atria; the lawyer and former minister Jorge Burgos; people from the cultural world such as actress Mariana Loyola and journalist Patricia Politzer; the activist José Andrés Murillo; or the feminist leader Antonia Orellana, among many others. At this point, Bunker highlights the importance of the constitution of the lists. "They are going to be important in themselves and I think it is important to highlight the magnitude of the new Constituent Unit coalition, which is Concertación 2.0, but flanked by a slightly more liberal center, which is Ciudadanos, and a slightly more left wing. progressive, which is the PRO. That type of negotiation, although it may be small parties and few votes, I think it can give an important margin, "he says. He focuses on the lists because, he explains, "in a proportional system where a high number of seats are elected" they predominate. That is why he believes that the independents who will have the best chance of being elected will be those who present themselves in a quota assigned by a party, such as the historian Jorge Baradit with the PS or the journalist Lucía López for the PPD. "Both are going to have very high odds, because they are in a district where they have a high level of knowledge," he says. At the lists of independents, which this time can be registered in a grouped way, Bunker looks at them with some skepticism because "they compete with large political machines, such as the Constituent Unit or Chile Vamos." In any case, it is easy to anticipate that the fight between these names will be close, and that many of them, in a district this highly valued and that is still witnessing new candidacies, will be left out of the new constitutional body.