******SPOILERS BELOW***********
Yes, the NO won.
But given what was had happened in that country -the repression, tortures, disappearances etc., the YES option still took over 40 PERCENT. WTF?
I would think no publicity at all would have done at least that much. Had the publicity concentrated on the regime abuses,as oppsed to happy jingles, would the polls have collected less NO votes? Seems so hard to believe.
Lots of Chileans did not want to return to Communism, which is what they were told would happen without Pinochet and so that may have influenced some of the Yes voters.
Regarding the No campaign it knew it would win if people turned out to vote. It didn't believe people would turn out to vote because of fear and also apathy as they thought their side would not win anyway, or that the vote would be rigged and corrupted to keep Pinochet in power. We see that as their campaign progresses everyone realises they might just win where they were cynical before. The No campaign won in two ways: one, they galvanised members of the electorate to vote and two, their win helped oust a dictator without the loss of more lives.
Keep silent unless what you are going to say is more important than silence.share
...I would add that most people probably would not have voted if the focus was solely on the tortures and disappearances. Remember the conversation that they had with the nanny (I believe she was nanny, or maybe she was the housekeeper). She mentioned that life wasn't so bad for her - her son was in college, her daughter has found work...and that was when Pinochet was still in power. Most folks, and that includes Americans as well, usually tune out the daily nastiness of the world to focus on their own personal lives. The whole Syria thing fizzled mostly because the general American public just didn't pay much attention. It seemed like just another case of violence and chaos "over there" even though there were (and continue to be) well-documented articles and videos of the suffering in the civil war.
While the advertising campaign was somewhat "fluffy" and vague in its definition of "happiness", it probably was the most effective method of getting the voters energized for their message. Had they focused purely on the disappearances and police abuses, they probably would not have been as successful. Obama, for example, won under the slogans of "hope" and "change" even though they were vague as well.
Given two sides of equal substance the voters flip like dumb coins. It was probably mostly an accident that No won, if the election was held on a different day the results could have been reversed
shareWell I can tell you the election results were rigged anyway, as you can see in the film. The official third count gave YES a definite win. It was after a few hours, when the army and police cars were leaving their posts and the Air Force general declared that NO won, that the results changed dramatically.
To this day, a big fraction (but not the majority) of the country denies the tortures and dissapearances, despite all the physical evidence. Those people claimed to have liked living in the country during those years, which means that they denied it back then too.
shareI was born and raised in Chile, during the right wing military dictatorship of Pinochet.
There was a lot of people who really had no idea of the atrocities committed by the Agents of the State. I can hardly believe it myself, that some people didn't knew, but it was true. A lot of people from the middle class, mainly grown up adults, didn't have any family member or close one affected, and they realized what happened after the end of dictatorship.
It is hard to believe, but I knew one of those ladies myself.
Some people also voted "yes" because they were so afraid, and remember back in 1980 there was a plebiscite that was corrupted by the dictatorship, the one that turned the chilean constitution in the mess it is right now.
The damages done to this country will last for a long time...
Please excuse my terrible redaction, english is not my native language IMDb = Catch-22