Television Campaigns in the Chilean Constituent Elections: The Negative and Anti-system Discourse in the Success of the Social Movement La Lista Del Pueblo and its Electoral Base

Abstract

ABSTRACT The People’s List (Lista del Pueblo) was a group of independent candidates united on its anti-party sentiment that successfully participated in the Chilean elections to choose the constituents in charge of writing a new constitution. Based on the framework of negative political campaigns and through a deductive methodology and content analysis, this research looks at the strategy used in their televised spots (N = 357). Likewise, and through the study of the electoral database of this election, made up of 345 boroughs, the electoral bases of the People’s List are established to explore relationships between the television campaign and its results according to political, socioeconomic, and sociodemographic aspects. The findings indicate that this group used the public television spot as a tactic based on an anti-establishment message, which had the purpose of channeling the demands of the social outbreak of October 2019 by promoting anger against the political and economic institutions.