Billionaire Piñera favourite to win Chile’s Sunday presidential election

The Centre for the Study of Contemporary Reality (CERC) poll gives Piñera a strong 44% plurality in Sunday’s election, with Senator Eduardo Frei receiving 31% of the vote, maverick Dep. Marco Enríquez-Ominami (MEO) 18%, and far-left candidate Jorge Arrate 7%.

In a January run-off election, the CERC poll gives an almost insurmountable 49% to 32% lead to Piñera over Senator Frei, his mostly likely run-off contender. In a run-off against maverick MEO, Piñera scores an almost equally decisive 47 to 35% victory.

Thirty-six percent of those interviewed by the poll expressed their belief that Frei would make it into the run-off election against Piñera, while 36% thought the run-off candidate would be MEO.

Fifty percent of those polled said they would like Piñera to be the nation’s next president, with only 18% preferring Frei and 17% MEO.

The CERC poll comes on the heels of another important political poll, the Centre for Public Studies (CEP) poll, which gave Piñera 36% of the first round vote and Frei 26%.

Another poll - reported Wednesday and underwritten by the conservative daily El Mercurio - confirmed the CERC poll results. It showed Frei ahead of MEO, although they almost evenly divided votes in Chile’s most important urban areas – Santiago, Concepcion and Valparaiso. The poll also showed Piñera consolidating his lead over both Frei and MEO.

By Steve Anderson - Santiago Times