The first round and the difference between the countryside and the city

Column by Naim Bro, Professor, School of Government, Adolfo Ibáñez University Researcher / Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.

I live in Santiago, but I vote in Romeral, a small town in Maule known for its cherries. Every time I return, the contrast is still evident: the conversations I hear in the urban environments where I move in the capital have little to do with what is talked about where I grew up.

It wasn't always like this. Six years ago, these differences existed, but to a lesser extent. Although rural areas tend to vote more conservatively than cities, there have been elections not so long ago where the left did better in the former.

But something changed after October 2019, and especially after the first Constitutional Convention. Many of the discussions that gained momentum were felt, in communities such as Romeral, as a direct challenge to their identity. The debate over rodeo—considered "animal abuse" by many in Santiago, but "cultural heritage" by many rural residents—clearly demonstrated this: what was a moral conversation in the city was perceived as cultural imposition in the countryside. This tension was ultimately reflected in voting patterns.

To understand its magnitude, we must look beyond the last elections. During much of the post-dictatorship period, the urban-rural divide tended to narrow. Each electoral cycle showed a smaller gap between the city and the countryside. The culminating point was in the second round between Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei in 2013: for the first time since the return to democracy, the rural world voted more to the left than the city.

However, this convergence trend has been broken. Since 2019, the gap has been growing steadily, and today it has become one of the most significant divides in politics. The first round of voting reaffirmed this trend: cities and rural areas are taking different political paths. In simple terms, urban communities voted more to the left than rural communities. The difference between the urban and rural vote was 6.7 points.

The most relevant aspect is not the specific data from this election, but rather the persistence of the phenomenon and the fact that this pattern is not unique to Chile. In the United States, authors show that American politics has been reorganizing itself around a deep territorial divide. Economic decline in rural areas, a perception of abandonment by urban elites, and a progressive cultural agenda that in many places is experienced as an imposition: the list is familiar.

The challenge is to understand how these gaps are formed, why they persist, and what they mean for a country that claims to aspire to a common project. They cannot be resolved with quick diagnoses or caricatures of "urban" and "rural" life, but rather with policies that recognize that, behind the numbers, there are different experiences of living in Chile. That is, perhaps, the most urgent starting point.

By Naim Bro, Professor, School of Government, Adolfo Ibáñez University Researcher / Millennium Institute Data Millennium Institute .

Published in La Tercera: https://www.latercera.com/opinion/noticia/la-primera-vuelta-y-la-distancia-entre-el-campo-y-la-ciudad/