Election propaganda of the Constitutional Councils on 26 April 2023 in Santiago de Chile.ELVIS GONZÁLEZ (EFE)
Monitoring the nature of campaign finance is crucial to a democracy as it reflects how economic interests are unfolding in the political arena. Based on official data from the Chilean Electoral Service (SERVEL), the Constitutional VAR of the Diego Portales University provides below a summary of the contributions for the election of the council that will propose a new constitution to the country. , which took place on May 7th. It is of particular interest to watch these numbers given the importance of the decisions being made in this forum, which he adopted this week.
The structure of election funding
Of the 353 candidatures for the Constitutional Council, three were indigenous candidacies and another three were independent candidatures not on the list. For the remaining 348 candidatures (98.6%), there were four funding options: receiving donations from individuals, the parties could receive an initial tax contribution calculated in proportion to previous votes, and borrowing based on the votes cast they would receive, will participate in the election or contribute with their own funds. However, a distinction must be made between private donations and tax contributions, which are made to the parties and are usually distributed among the various candidates, and donations that are made directly to the respective candidates – always via the election service, the SERVEL. Next, we analyze the data aggregated by lists.
The competing lists faced the political competition with different financing strategies. The Chilean Seguro list (of the right-wing coalition Unión Demócrata Independiente, UDI; Renovación Nacional, RN; Evópoli) based their electoral strategy on raising funds through private donations, which made up almost half of their contributions (as shown in Table 1). ). Both the left-wing Unity for Chile coalition (Frente Amplio, Partido Comunista, PC; Partido Socialista, PS; Partido Liberal, PL) and the more centrist Todo por Chile coalition (Democracia Cristiana, DC; Partido Radical, PR; Partido Por la Democracy , PPD) based their campaign primarily on initial donations from the Treasury Department. This was to be expected given that these are parties less close to big business, which has traditionally been the main source of campaign fundraising.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, pursued a strategy that balanced its contributions from private donations, tax contributions, and cash on delivery loans. Finally, the burgeoning People’s Party was the one that relied most on tax donations to structure its campaign, being the political force receiving the fewest donations from the private sector.
Table 2 shows that in absolute terms, the Chile Seguro coalition received the most donations from the traditional right-wing parties: 5,466 million Chilean pesos (about $6.8 million); followed by the ruling party’s Unity for Chile with 3,302 million ($4.1 million); All for Chile, from center-left, at 1,324 million ($1.6 million); the far-right Republican Party with 1,079 million ($1.2 million); and the populist People’s Party with 413 million ($500 million).
When we compare total spending per list to total votes received (which can be seen in Table 3), we find that Republicans were the most efficient on a spend/vote ratio, costing 311 Chilean pesos ($0.39). ) for every vote they got. For the Chile Seguro and Todo por Chile coalitions — the traditional right and center-left coalition — the cost of each vote received was much higher, amounting to 2,648 pesos ($3.6) and 1,510 pesos ($1.9), respectively Dollar).
With regard to private campaign donations, it should be borne in mind that in the case of Chile, corporate donations are prohibited, but donations by individuals are permitted. As we expected, the Chile-Seguro coalition — the traditional right — was by far the one to receive the most donations, at 2,706 million Chilean pesos (about $3.4 million), reflecting the interest of people involved with linked to the big companies support the traditional parties UDI and RN to the detriment of other political options. This is not new to previous election-funding programs, as these two parties have historically concentrated the largest amount of private donations.
We were also interested in analyzing the amount of donations (see Table 5). Again, important differences in strategies for collecting resources from the private sector can be identified. In the case of Chile Seguro – from the historical right – it is the company that not only received the most donations from private individuals, but also 64% of the total donations they received amounted to amounts in excess of five million Chilean pesos ( about $6,300). ). It is interesting to note that the Republican Party’s strategy differed from the others, as in their case 46% of the donations received were concentrated in amounts between 100,000 and 999,000 Chilean pesos ($126 to $1,200).
We also wanted to define the characteristics of the main donors of this campaign. To do this, we select those donors who only contributed to the lists that ultimately received seats on the council, regardless of whether the candidate they donated was elected. We are interested in donors’ interest in supporting certain lists or political projects.
For example, we observe donations of more than one million Chilean pesos ($1,200), which amounted to 46 in the case of the far-right Republican Party, 62 in the UDI, 38 in the RN, 15 in Evópoli and the official list Unidad por Chile. 26. Because the SERVEL donation database includes the full name of the donor and the amount of the donation, we were able to find background information on the professional history of 165 donors, considering public sources such as the Financial Markets Commission, Market Screener, and other sources. Open. Of these, 139 cases (84%) are individuals working in the private sector in various fields, while the remaining 26 (16%) work in positions of political representation or in some government departments in political trust positions.
In identifying the productive areas, we find that UDI and RN are becoming more diversified, receiving donations from people working in the service sector (lawyers, retail, communications, etc.), from the financial sector and from others in the agricultural sector . and miner. Concentration in the financial sector is slightly higher in the Republican Party. In the case of Evópoli, on the other hand, the donations come mainly from people who work in the service sector. The greatest contrast is with regard to the Unity for Chile coalition – the list of the left-wing governing party – which receives its donations mainly from those associated with political positions of trust.
As I said, the donations from people from the environment of large and medium-sized companies mostly went exclusively to right-wing parties. In this context, a number of peculiarities should be noted. For example, businessman Wolf von Appen donated large sums to the four right-wing parties (PR, UDI, RN, Evópoli), but a larger amount to the Republican Party (CL$24.5 million) and a smaller amount to the other parties . In the meantime, three political businesses are involved with donations: Beatriz von Appen (PR, UDI, RN), Gonzalo Martino (Evópoli, UDI and PR), Piero Solari (UDI, RN, Evópoli) and María Mercedes Hurtado (PR, UDI ). RN).
The largest donations to the Republican Party include Francisco Allende Decombe (15 million Chilean pesos; $19,000), Matthew Taylor Pollmann (14 million; $17,700) and Alejandro Martini (12.9 million; $16,300). In the case of UDI, those of Juan Casanueva Prendez (60 million; $76,000), Horacio Pavez (39.5 million; $50,000), Patricio Parodi Gil (30 million; $38,000) and María Patricia Matte Larraín (24 million; $30,300). ). In RN, top wins were José Hurtado Vicuña (22.5 million; $28,400) and Carlo Solari and Gonzalo Said Handal (10 million; $12,600 each). In the other cases, the amounts are slightly lower.
Three conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. First, and as several previous studies have shown, greater investment in electoral campaigns is no guarantee of electoral victory. Money seems to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition to get more votes. Second, most of the donations came from people with ties to big business, and they observed the traditional pattern of support for the parties that had dominated the right-wing political scene, the UDI and RN. Third, the Republican Party not only achieved an unexpected election result, but also developed a strategy to diversify its funding sources, certainly knowing that it would not be able to compete for access to resources enjoyed by the other two right-wing parties to be dominated .
Claudio Fuentes He is Full Professor at Diego Portales University, Coordinator of the Constitutional VAR and Editor of The Failed Trial: The Constituent Dynamics of Chile 2020-2022.