Chile held its municipal elections this weekend in its first elections with mandatory voting since it was reinstated 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 opposition coalition of the traditional right, with 122 elected officials compared to the left-wing ruling party, grouped in the Contigo Chile Mejor pact, which obtained 111 municipalities. The independents have reached 103.
The ruling party of President Gabriel Boric has lost the municipality of Santiago, the third most populated in the country, to the traditional right, which had been in power since 2021 by Irací Hassler, of the Communist Party (PC). The position was taken from him by Mario Desbordes, from National Renewal (RN), former minister of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014, 2018-2022), who has celebrated his victory together with Evelyn Matthei, the main presidential letter of that sector with a view to the election of 2025. Desbordes obtained a large majority, 51% compared to Hassler’s 28%.
Precisely, RN was one of the parties that received the most support: of the 345 mayors who were elected, it obtained 38 municipal seats. But his coalition, Chile Vamos, lost Puente Alto, the municipality with the most inhabitants in the country that governed for 24 years with mayors from RN: this Sunday the victory went to the left-wing independent Matías Toledo, the second most voted after Tomás Vodanovic, of the Frente Amplio, who was re-elected in Maipú.
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, occurs 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 .
However, in these elections no one particularly swept as a coalition. According to what the political scientist from the University of Chile, Octavio Avendaño, told Morning Express, “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: “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 mean that we do not work for the common good of Chile and its people.”
“During these days,” added the president, “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,” Boric concluded.
What the Broad Front won and lost
If in the 2021 municipal elections the Frente Amplio (FA), Boric’s party, achieved eight mayorships, four years later, although it maintained some key municipalities in the Metropolitan Region, including Maipú, it also lost an emblematic one: Ñuñoa.
Good news for the FA, in addition to the re-election of Tomás Vodanovic in Maipú, the second most populated municipality in Chile, is that he has also emerged as the mayor with the highest number of votes. The 34-year-old sociologist has appeared since 2023 as one of the highest-rated political figures in the country.
Also, the FA managed to re-elect Macarena Ripamonti in the municipality of Viña del Mar, who obtained 51% against the independent urban planner supported by Chile Vamos, Iván Poduje. In addition, she retained the town of Valdivia, in the south of the country, with Carla Amtmann and achieved a victory in Valparaíso with Camila Nieto, the first woman to take office in the port city, located 120 kilometers from Santiago.
But the leftist formation could not maintain Ñuñoa, a municipality in the eastern sector of Santiago emblematic for the Frente Amplio, where mayor Emilia Ríos lost to Sebastián Sichel, former presidential candidate of the traditional right and who ran as an independent supported by Chile Vamos. The battle was fought vote by vote until the end of this Sunday.
In Puente Alto, the commune with the largest number of inhabitants in the country (750,000), Matías Toledo has been elected, an independent linked to social movements, a former militant of the left-wing Equality Party, who does not belong to any pact, so his victory It has involved a blow to traditional politics. And if Chile Vamos – the independent ex-RN candidate Karla Rubilar, Piñera’s former minister – lost an emblematic municipality that had been in its power for 24 years, 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 in 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 to achieve eight. Of them, two are from municipalities of the Metropolitan Region, Macul and Tiltil.
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 Marcela Cubillos, former Minister of Education of Piñera, an independent supported by Chile Vamos and the Republican Party, of the far-right, who was seen as 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 Counterpublished 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.
