This one in the final outcome of Chile’s Presidential election, concluded last Sunday.
[Left-wing candidate Jeanette] Jara conceded with over 80% of the ballots counted. [Conservative candidate Antonio] Kast won with 58% of the votes in one of the most lopsided presidential victories since Chile’s return to democracy in 1990.
A marked turnaround in the runoff from the original, in which Jara had won a solid plurality, 27%, with Kast having gotten 24%.
There’s a hint in all of that: Jara was the only one, or maybe of two, Leftist candidates in the pre-runoff electoin; there were more than a half-dozen right and right-wing candidates who, in the aggregate, diluted those final 58-ish% across the lot of them, denying each of them an outright victory in that stage. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that a lesser candidate than Kast, with that dilution, could have been the one making the runoff, potentially handing the final election to Jara.
Republicans could benefit from that hint by coalescing early in their primaries. One or two rounds should be sufficient for all but the most desperately egoistic candidate(s) to identify the only or the couple of candidates who would be viable in the final election. Those egoists hanging on purely out of pridefulness should be resoundingly outvoted to the point of political destruction.