Replication Data for Re-evaluating the Role of Ideology in Chile

Voters’ ideological stances have long been considered one of the most important factors for understanding electoral choices in Chile. In recent years, however, the literature has begun to call this premise into question due to several changes in the Chilean political landscape: the current crisis of representation, the high programmatic congruence between the two main coalitions, the decline in the political relevance of the dictatorship, and the rise of non-programmatic electoral strategies. In addition to these transformations, Chile switched to voluntary voting in 2012. In this article, I study whether ideology still informs electoral choices in Chile in an era of voluntary voting. I implement a conjoint survey experiment in low-middle income neighborhoods in Santiago, in which we would expect voters to be less ideological. I show that candidates’ ideological labels are crucial for understanding the electoral decisions of a large part of the sample, particularly among likely voters.