Chile held its municipal elections this weekend in its first elections with mandatory voting since it was restored in 2022. The results regarding mayors, with 89.8% of the tables scrutinized according to the Electoral Service (Servel), showed an inclination of Chileans to vote for the Chile Vamos coalition of the traditional right, with 122 elected officials regarding the left-wing ruling party, grouped in the Contigo Chile Mejor pact, which achieved 111 municipalities. The independents have reached 103.
President Gabriel Boric’s ruling party has lost in the hands of the traditional right the municipality of Santiagothe third most populated in the country, which was in power since 2021 by Irací Hassler, of the Communist Party (PC). The position was taken from him by Mario Desbordes, from Renovación Nacional (RN), former minister of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014, 2018-2022), who celebrated his victory alongside Evelyn Mattheithe main presidential letter of that sector with a view to the 2025 election.
Santiago is an emblematic municipality in Chile, known as ‘the mother of all battles’ because it has been a predictor of the political color that later reaches La Moneda. The preference of Chileans for the traditional right, in this case Renovación Nacional, a moderate formation, has occurred in the run-up to the 2025 presidential elections, where Matthei, current mayor of Providencia, according to all surveys is the politician with the greatest leadership.
In these elections, no one particularly swept as a coalition. According to what the political scientist from the University of Chile, Octavio Avendaño, told EL PAÍS, “this is an election that shows an open scenario because the results are differentiated. Therefore, no one can claim to be a winner.” Claudio Fuentes, director of the Social Sciences Research Institute at the Diego Portales University, agreed, saying in his X account that, “in general, the right is recovering electoral ground. Good RN performance. The center-left loses ground, without breaking down (…) One could not speak of a dominant political force in Chile. The presidential election remains open.”
Boric: “We have a diverse country”
On this Sunday night, from La Moneda, President Boric said in a speech that “these elections are sweet and bitter for all sectors. There are none who can claim overwhelming triumphs.” And he added: “The catastrophic forecasts on both sides have not come true. We have a diverse country and we have the duty to live better among ourselves and that legitimate political differences do not imply that we do not work for the common good of Chile and its people.”
“During these days many things will be said, there will be many interpretations of who won and it will be done based on different data, according to the view that is most convenient for whoever says it. But, from my perspective at least, the truth is that in Chile different political forces coexist that have to learn to understand each other to improve the quality of life of those who are watching us and to whom we owe (…) I at least tell them Honestly: I am happy with this election, I am happy with Chile, I am happy with its result.”
The performance of the Broad Front
Good news for the Frente Amplio (FA), Boric’s party, has gone far beyond the re-election of Tomas Vodanovic in Maipú, the second most populated municipality in Chile, but has also turned out to be one of the mayors with the highest number of votes in the elections. The 34-year-old sociologist has appeared since 2023 as one of the best evaluated political figures in the country.
Bad news for the leftist formation has been in Ñuñoa, a municipality that the FA could not retain the current mayor Emilia Ríos against Sebastián Sichel, former presidential candidate of the traditional right and who ran as an independent supported by Chile Vamos.
But, in Puente Alto, the commune with the largest number of inhabitants in the country, Matías Toledo, a left-wing independent who does not belong to any pact, has been elected, so his victory has involved a hard blow to traditional politics. And if the traditional right lost an emblematic municipality that was in its power more than two decades ago, the ruling party failed to charm its candidate from the Socialist Party.
The first eight Republican mayors
In this election, it has been the traditional right, Chile Vamos, the bloc that has grown the most mayors: 122. The Republican Party, on the extreme right, led by José Antonio Kast, has also gained ground, but because it went from having no mayor has achieved eight, including a municipality in the Metropolitan Region (Macul).
For Cristián Valdivieso, analyst and director of the polling firm Criteria, this was “a very good election for mayors for Chile Vamos and not very good for Republicans, who must be waiting for the result of councilors.” “Compulsory voting calls for moderation. A lesson for the loudest and most polarizing,” he noted on Tele13.
And if Hassler’s defeat in Santiago has been a blow for the Communist Party, and for the ruling party, in Las Condes he has lost the election Marcela Cubillosformer Minister of Education of Piñera, an independent supported by Chile Vamos and the Republican Party, of the ultra-right, who was considered a sure winner. But the voters of the municipality in the eastern sector of the capital have given a surprise by supporting the lawyer and current councilor Catalina San Martín, independent, moderate right-wing and, in addition, supported by centrist political forces.
At the end of September, in the middle of his mayoral race, he became the protagonist of a controversy when the newspaper The Counter public the high salary he earned for almost four years as a teacher at a private university: a gross monthly salary of 17 million Chilean pesos (about $18,500; 11 million liquid pesos), a complaint for which the Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation.
