SANTIAGO, Chile — Chileans are choosing between far-right José Antonio Kast, the favorite in polls, and left-wing Jeannette Jara, a Communist Party member and former labor minister, in a polarizing presidential runoff. With voting compulsory, many plan to cast ballots for candidates who do not fully reflect their views.
At a closing rally in Temuco, Kast repeated his campaign themes to thousands, drawing chants of “Communists out!” and biggest cheers for promises to deport migrants and imprison criminals. “I’m voting for Kast because of his security agenda,” said 18-year-old first-time voter Benjamín Sandoval. “The country is very unsafe… they could attack you, and it’s the migrants who are doing it most.”
A pronounced public fear of crime has taken hold, amplified by intense media attention. A 2024 Gallup report ranked Chile sixth of 144 countries for fear of walking alone at night, even though the country remains among Latin America’s safer nations. Violent crime rose over the past four years, with homicides spiking in 2023 before recently declining. Illegal migration, notably from Venezuela, has also become a central public concern after hundreds of thousands of arrivals since 2018.
Kast, 59, a Catholic father of nine and leader of the Partido Republicano (Republican Party), has leveraged these anxieties. He is the son of Michael Kast, a German who joined the Nazi Party before emigrating to Chile, and his brother Miguel served as a minister under Augusto Pinochet. José Antonio Kast began his political life supporting Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite and has defended the dictatorship that presided over widespread torture, killings and disappearances.
But Kast has downplayed socially controversial positions that harmed earlier campaigns, largely focusing this cycle on security and migration. He proposes cutting corporate taxes and slashing the public budget by $6 billion in his first 18 months, and has suggested mass dismissals of public employees hired under leftist President Gabriel Boric; he has not detailed how his fiscal targets would be achieved.
Jara, 51, is a longtime Communist Party member who served under Michelle Bachelet and as labor minister for Boric. She pushed pension reforms, helped raise the minimum wage and shortened the workweek. Her campaign centers on affordability measures: a proposed universal core income of about $800 a month, gradual minimum-wage increases, lower electricity bills, and state savings contributions to help 25- to 40-year-olds buy homes. At her final rally in Santiago, supporter Roxana Muñoz, 58, said she identified with Jara and rejected Kast’s rhetoric about women.
If polls hold and Kast wins, he would become Chile’s most right-wing leader since Pinochet’s 1990 exit — part of a broader regional shift that has seen conservative and anti-establishment forces gain ground in Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador. The runoff pits sharply contrasting visions for Chile’s future: a security- and migration-focused platform from the right versus a leftist agenda prioritizing social and economic reforms.
