By Andrés Oppenheimer.
The latest polls in several leftist-ruled countries show that public opinion is shifting sharply to the right.
Latin America’s so-called “pink tide,” as the recent shift to the left in countries across the region is often referred to, may not last as long as many of us thought. The latest polls in several leftist-ruled countries show that public opinion is shifting sharply to the right.
A poll released March 8 in Chile, where leftist president Gabriel Boric took office last year after winning the elections by a landslide, says that 26% of Chileans describe themselves as right of center, up from 16% in 2019.
“Chile runs toward the right,” said the press release of the survey by the CERC-MORI polling firm. Only 16% of Chileans describe themselves as left of center, it said.
The Boric government’s approval rate has fallen to 25%, while 64% of Chileans have a negative opinion of it. The remainder didn’t answer, the poll said.
MORI director Marta Lagos, who also conducts an annual Latinobarómetro poll in 18 Latin American countries, told me that Chile may not be an exception in the region.
“We may see a ‘Chilean effect,’ or a shift to the right, across Latin America,” Lagos said. “Part of it is a reaction to the new leftist governments.”
I was surprised by her analysis, because Lagos can hardly be dismissed as biased toward the right. In her Twitter postings, she has often shown a clear — sometimes enthusiastic — sympathy for Boric.
But Lagos told me that her latest poll of Chileans shows something deeper than just dissatisfaction with their nation’s relatively new government.
“What we’re seeing is a rise in conservative values, a trend toward greater individualism,” Lagos told me. “People are showing an increasing interest in personal-freedom issues, and a decreasing interest in equality issues.”
We may be seeing a similar “equality fatigue” across the region. In Colombia, where leftist President Gustavo Petro took office last year as his country’s first leftist president, a March 9 survey by the Cifras and Conceptos polling firm showed that the president’s approval rate fell from 62% in November to 52% nowadays.
Much of that poll was conducted before press revelations that Petro’s son Nicolas may have taken money from drug traffickers in exchange for political favors. Colombia’s attorney general is investigating, at the president’s request.
Perhaps more interesting, only 20% of Colombians now identify themselves as leftists, down from 30% in November, the poll shows.
The percentage of people who described themselves as “centrists” rose by 10% since November, while those who called themselves “rightists” remained virtually stable, it says.
In Argentina, polls show that right-of-center opposition parties are widely favored to win the October presidential elections.
Populist-leftist President Alberto Fernandez’s popularity has sunk to 18%, while his disapproval rate is at 75%, according to a new Management & Fit polling firm survey.
If Argentina’s elections were held today, 66.4% of Argentines would vote for a change in current government policies, while 22.2% would vote for a continuation. The most popular presidential hopefuls are right of center former security minister Patricia Bullrich and Buenos Aires mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, the poll shows.
In Peru, leftist former President Pedro Castillo was constitutionally overthrown and put in jail in December after he announced on national television the dissolution of Congress, a de facto coup, after serving only 16 months in office. Peru is likely to hold early elections late this year or in early 2024.
In Brazil, leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who took office in January, is rated as good or excellent by 40% of the people, according to the latest poll by Ipespe/Febraban. In Mexico, leftist populist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s popularity rate has fallen to 63%, from 81% in 2019, according to an Oraculus poll. Lopez Obrador has said he will comply with the laws that would not allow him to run for re-election in 2024.
Granted, except for the case of Argentina and Mexico, most of the remaining left-of-center presidents have several years left in their terms. But the public opinion shifts in Chile, Colombia, Argentina, and other countries may signal, at the very least, that Latin America’s latest “pink tide” may be past its peak.
With luck, Latin American voters will shy away from demagogues on the extreme left and extreme right and move the region in the near future to the rational center.
©2023 The Miami Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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