This Sunday, November 21, Chile will once again celebrate a celebration of democracy. This time, nothing more and nothing less than general elections: president and Congress, plus regional councilors. An election of this type is always important, but probably even more so this time, given the political, social and health context we are facing. 

Perhaps out of habit, the eyes are mainly on what happens with the presidential election. As we have not seen for a long time, the first round would be extremely competitive and uncertain according to what the polls indicate (highly criticized otherwise, but if anyone knows a better instrument, I invite you to expose it). In order not to be biased by one or the other, we use the aggregate polls exercise conducted by Three Fifthswhich shows a near tie in the first position: Boric leads with almost 23% of the preferences, followed by Kast with 22%. In third place, Provoste with 11%, while Sichel, with 8%, appears fourth, not far from Parisi (7%). We have not seen this type of dispersion of votes before, which, added to the high percentage of undecided voters, means that the only certainty in the results of the first round is that we are going to have more than one surprise. As Kenneth Bunker mentionsgiven the same political, social and health context I mentioned above, it is not possible to make reasonable projections not because the polls are bad (OK, maybe some are), but because, as he illustrates so well, when you take pictures of a lot of moving objects, they tend to come out blurry.

This is how, in this election, very different candidates face each other, some of them with social concordance, but opposite poles in the economic field, others completely similar in their diagnosis, but with totally opposite solutions, and others that we do not even know very well what they think. On top of that, one of the candidates is not even in the country.

But, perhaps more important than the presidential one is the parliamentary one. During the last two years it has become clear that by forming circumstantial majorities for some votes it is even possible to pass to carry the Constitution and that, with enough votes, it is possible to co-manage the country. The current issues under discussion in Congress are not going to end with its current conformation and, if certain ongoing initiatives continue, the forces in both chambers could change significantly so as to be able to pass or not some initiatives. Thus, at least on our side, we will follow in detail those results, which will no longer focus only on the political color of the candidates, but on what they say about specific issues that concern us: retirements, taxes, fiscal spending, capital markets, etc.

Therefore, no matter what your preferences are, it is not the same. Being informed, using the new tools and channels available to get to know the candidates (even to see if you are a "match" with any of them), including the possibility of interacting in social networks with them, makes us more responsible for the process than ever. No more blaming the cobblestone for who gets elected, for what they legislate or how they lead the country. Because it doesn't matter, let's go vote.

Nathan Pincheira 

Chief Economist of Fynsa