Do memory sites influence far-right vote? Evidence from Chile
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Abstract
Chile maintains a comprehensive registry of more than 1,000 sites where human rights violations were committed during the Pinochet dictatorship. In this paper, I examine whether proximity to memory sites affects far-right electoral support. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares voting locations near memory sites to those farther away across the 2021 and 2025 presidential elections, I find that proximity to memory sites reduces the far-right Partido Republicano vote share by 0.9–1.7 percentage points within 1km of a site, with the largest declines closest to the sites, a drop of roughly 6 percent of the party’s vote share. At the same time, proximity increases support for the Partido Nacional Libertario, a more recently founded far-right party with more populist overtones than authoritarian nostalgia. These findings complicate the notion that official commemoration of past authoritarian violence deters far-right electoral appeal: memory sites penalize the party most directly tied to the dictatorship while a populist far-right alternative absorbs part of the defecting vote.