Presidential approval for the outgoing president helps explain vote intention for the incumbent party candidate in Mexico Romero Economic perceptions have also been found to influence democratic consolidation, political culture, democratic legitimacy and trust in institutions Hawkins et al. Declining turnout, with slightly over half eligible voters casting ballots, and with even lower turnout among the youth, weakened the effect of the authoritarian-democratic cleavage that influenced elections in the s Contreras and Navia ; Luna and Toro Maureira Hence, models that predict stable electorates or those that associate shifts in approval with changing economic conditions might be insufficient to explain presidential approval volatility in Chile.
We consider the extent to which economic vote variables explain presidential approval in Chile. Thus, we formally propose four hypotheses:. The case of Chile allows us to better understand the evolution of presidential approval in democracies that have been governed by the same party or coalition for a long time before experiencing an alternation in power. Although cases where alternation in power after a long tenure by the same coalition are common, there are far fewer cases where that alternation occurred in the context of an expanding economy.
In the absence of an economic crisis, alternations in power after a long tenure by the same coalition offer a unique opportunity to understand the dynamics of presidential approval determinants. The dependent variable is presidential approval —although we also use vote intention for the pre-electoral poll as a point of comparison with the first presidential approval numbers.
Our models also include long-term variables. Sex is coded as 1 for women. Age is a continuous variable. Capital takes the value of 1 for respondents who live in the capital city, and 0 for those who reside elsewhere in the country. Ideology divides respondents into those who self-identify with the right, center and left, and those who do not identify on the ideological scale the reference category.
Our short-term variables include sociotropic, 1 sociotropic prospective, 2 egotripoc 3 and egotropic prospective 4 outlook. CEP polls ask respondents about their top three priorities for government action. Formulas 1 and 2 summarize the aggregate regression model and Table 3 provides a summary of statistics. Since the transition to democracy in , presidential elections in Chile have reflected the multi-party system organized around two coalitions.
Figure 1 shows presidential election results from to After badly losing in and , the Alianza forced a runoff in , when the country was undergoing an economic recession. In , there were 4 presidential candidates. He faced a weakened and splintered left. The presence of two leftwing alternative presidential candidates reflected the weakening of the center-left coalition.
In the municipal election, the Alianza obtained its first victory in such contests since they were first held in The decision led ME-O to run as an independent. In the runoff, Frei did slightly better among older Chileans—those most likely to be influenced by the authoritarian-democratic divide.
Frei only won among lower-income groups. Ever since the transition to democracy, presidents have enjoyed honeymoons and have experienced subsequent fluctuations in support. Figure 2 Presidential approval in Chile, Yet, his approval ratings never fully recovered to pre levels. GDP per capita declined by 2.
By late , GDP per capita growth was 4. Figure 3 shows selected macroeconomic indicators dating back to From to , GDP per capita growth averaged 4. Unemployment reached an almost two-decade low of 6. Inflation remained low. This occurred despite the economic recovery starting in Prospective socio and egotropic views were more optimistic in the pre-electoral poll of After the election, neutral economic assessments prevailed over positive and negatives views from mid to late There is an inverse relationship between presidential approval and negative economic outlook.
As presidential approval improved, so did positive sociotropic and egotropic assessments. Despite the positive trend in economic indicators, people's views on the economy fluctuated in different directions throughout the term, with differences in egotropic and sociotropic current and prospective positive and negative outlooks. Given that we are assessing the effect of issue salience and cost of ruling, we include relevant indicators to measure the extent to which issue salience and cost of ruling affected approval.
CEP polls also ask respondents to enumerate the three problems that the government should be devoted to solving. Figure 5 shows presidential approval and the percentage of respondents who mention public security, jobs, education and health as priorities the government should focus on. Concerns with jobs experienced a decline after the presidential elections and then fluctuated similarly with presidential approval.
Popular concern with health increased, especially towards the end of the term, moving together with presidential approval in the second half of the administration.
His honeymoon was shorter even though the economy was on a solid recovery. Table 4 shows the log-odds and Table 5 shows the change in predicted probabilities. Entries are unstandardized logistic regression coefficients, with standard errors in parenthesis. Our independent variables can be grouped into three sets of predictors.
The first are long term predictors, including socio demographic sex, age, region of residence and socioeconomic status and ideological variables self-identification on the ideological scale. Then, we present the effect of economic vote variables present and retrospective sociotropic and egotropic outlook.
Third, we include a set of dummy variables to identify issue salience and cost of ruling. We identify those people who mention education, jobs, security and health as priorities for government action. Age did not have a significant effect in the first-round. Our dependent variable for the other three hypotheses is presidential approval. Ideology remains a strong predictor. Leftwing respondents were the least supportive.
Interestingly, being centrist positively explains presidential approval in , and Education negatively accounts for presidential support. However, the variable is only significant in , when the student-led protests peaked. Those who prioritized jobs were also less likely to approve of the president in the last two years. Leftists were more likely to reject his performance. In terms of issue salience, those who prioritized education and jobs as a policy for government action were more likely to disapprove of his presidency, while those who prioritized security were more likely to approve of him.
There are three main takeaways from our models. Thus, there is evidence that supports the economic vote hypotheses. A higher SES also had a positive effect on presidential approval, but its effect was weaker than the effect of economic vote variables.
It is only significant in , the year student-led protests peaked, and in the full model. Perceiving jobs as a priority holds a negative effect on presidential approval in and , two years when the unemployment rate was low, and in the full model. That might point to a cost of ruling effect, as those who prioritized jobs punished the government in the latter part of the administration when they failed to see progress on the issue they cared about.
They were also more likely to have positive sociotropic current and prospective assessments and egotropic prospective assessments. Perhaps, economic perceptions themselves can be explained by variables associated to ideology or other endogenous variables that account for people's views. When that alternation takes place under improving economic conditions and the new government presides over a period of economic expansion, the economic vote determinants might have a significant effect on explaining fluctuations in presidential approval, but they do not tell the whole story.
Although morally questionable, this kind of tax avoidance can be legal. Offshore jurisdictions also tend to be highly secretive and publish little or no information about the companies or trusts incorporated there. This can make them useful to criminals, such as tax evaders or money launderers, who need to hide money from tax or law enforcement authorities. It is also true that people in corrupt or unstable countries may use offshore providers to put their assets beyond the reach of repressive governments or criminal adversaries who may try to seize them, or to seek to circumvent hard currency restrictions.
Others may go offshore for reasons of inheritance or estate planning. Moving money offshore is not in or of itself illegal, and there are legitimate reasons why some people do it. Not everyone named in the Pandora papers is suspected of wrongdoing. Those who are may stand accused of a wide range of misbehaviour: from the morally questionable through to the potentially criminal.
The Guardian is only publishing stories based on leaked documents after considering the public interest. That is a broad concept that may include furthering transparency by revealing the secret offshore owners of UK property, even where those owners have done nothing wrong. Other articles might illuminate issues of important public debate, raise moral questions, shed light on how the offshore industry operates, or help inform voters about politicians or donors in the interests of democratic accountability.
But nor did subsequent governments. The wining candidates have less than a month to convince their allies to support their campaigns.
Past elections show that expected transfers of votes from one candidate to another are not so simple. Never before in the history of post-transition Chile had the winner of the first-round vote received less than 40 percent. This makes the run-off more competitive than ever before.
In , under the government of Michelle Bachelet, an electoral reform was passed that increased the number of seats from to in the Chamber of Deputies and from 38 to 50 in the Senate.
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