The surveys of the Center for Public Studies in the plebiscitary situation, 1987-1988: emergence, criticism and evaluation of a political input

Abstract

The article analyses the effects of the polls made by the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP) on the traditional press, on the road to the plebiscite of 1988, during the last years of Pinochet's dictatorship. Thus, it proposes that: first, it was thanks to the polls that the CEP increased the public visibility of its diagnostics and, in the second place, despite that this institution was an initiative of civilians that supported the regime, the CEP avoided actively supporting Pinochet with its polls during those years, in contrast to other institutions that were part of the same sector. The CEP'S archive and interviews with
actors of those years were used as sources.