Chileans were to choose between a flamboyant billionaire and a lackluster former president as their country’s next leader yesterday, with polls ahead of the vote showing neither candidate had a clear majority.
Voter intention surveys put Sebastian Pinera, a media magnate and big stakeholder in Chile’s flagship LAN airline, and Eduardo Frei, an uncharismatic politician who was head of state from 1994 to 2000, in a technical dead heat.
Pinera and Frei are the only candidates left standing after a Dec. 13 first-round vote knocked out other presidential hopefuls.
If Pinera wins it would end the rule of the leftist four-party Concertacion coalition that has been in power since the end of General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990.
Frei is a member of the Christian Democratic party. His father, Eduardo Frei Montalva, was president of Chile between 1964 and 1970.
A Wednesday survey showed Pinera with 50.9 percent of intended ballots, while Frei is projected to pick up 49.1 percent. That slender difference is much less than the survey’s margin of error, meaning the outcome of Sunday’s poll is impossible to call.
Pinera’s early confidence was backed by the 44 percent of the vote he received in the first round of voting, far more than the 29 percent picked up by Frei.
That score led pundits to predict that Pinera, 60, was on track to end the grip on power enjoyed by the Concertacion ruling coalition.
But a redoubling of efforts by outgoing President Michelle Bachelet — constitutionally barred from standing for another term — to pass on some of her sky-high popularity to Frei, appears to have paid dividends.
An endorsement in Frei’s favor by an independent leftist defeated in the first round, former film director Marco Enriquez Ominami, also looks to have helped turn the tide.
The message Bachelet was pushing was clear: that Pinera’s multiple business interests made him a less-than-ideal candidate to run Chile’s vibrant economy.
Polls were to open at 7am and close nine hours later. Some 8.3 million Chileans were eligible to vote. Officials expected to have the first official results by 10pm.
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