Left-wing and ultra-right candidates advanced to the second round of elections

Chile’s presidential election will be decided in a runoff between left-wing candidate Jeannette Jara and ultra-right politician José Antonio Kast.

In the first round of voting on Sunday, the moderate communist party Jara got 26.8 percent after more than 90 percent of the votes were counted, followed by Kast with just under 24 percent. According to the survey, Kast, who is from Germany, is the favorite in the decisive second round of elections on December 14.

Republican candidates then have the opportunity to attract votes from supporters of other right-wing candidates who were eliminated in the first round. The 59-year-old, who is running for president for the third time, appeared confident of victory after the first round of voting: “We will rebuild our homeland,” the father of nine told his supporters.

The lawyer, whose father was a Nazi-era Wehrmacht soldier, would be Chile’s first right-wing president since the end of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s reign (1973-1990). Kast himself made no secret of his admiration for the dictator, who persecuted, tortured and murdered thousands of members of his opposition.

After the first round of voting, leftist candidate Jara called on the public not to despair. “Don’t let fear freeze your heart,” he said. The 51-year-old former labor and social affairs minister is a member of the South American country’s Communist Party. However, he is considered a moderate leftist and is running as a candidate of the center-left alliance.

In the first round of voting, Jara did worse than pollsters expected, while Kast did better. Rodrigo Arellano of the Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile described the results of the first round as “very bad news” for Jara. There is “no way” he can win the second round of elections.

A total of eight candidates applied to replace outgoing leftist President Gabriel Boric. Chile’s electoral law requires a second round of elections to be held if no candidate wins an absolute majority in the first round. On Sunday, populist candidate Franco Parisi came in a surprising third place, ahead of radical right-wing candidate Johannes Kaiser and conservative candidate Evelyn Matthei.

The most important topics in the election campaign were the fight against criminal gangs and immigration. During President Boric’s term, the murder rate fell by ten percent, but increasing violence from criminal gangs was a concern for many Chileans. The country also recorded an increase in migration numbers. The majority of Chileans attribute the increase in crime to illegal immigration.

Kast has announced that it will expel some 337,000 undocumented people – mostly Venezuelans – out of the country. During the election campaign, he announced mass deportations, construction of a border wall, strengthening the police and deploying the army in critical areas. Kast said while casting his vote in the capital Santiago de Chile:

After casting his vote in Santiago, leftist candidate Jara assured that he had “no complexes regarding security.”

In parallel with the first round of presidential elections, members of the House of Representatives were also re-elected in the South American country. In addition, half the seats in the new Senate were allocated. For the first time since 2012, voting is mandatory in Chile.