Kast vs Jara: Chile votes in polarising presidential run-off

Chileans cogwheel up to formed their ballots successful run-off election, with far-right campaigner Jose Kast gaining crushed successful polls.

Chileans are acceptable to ballot successful a intimately watched statesmanlike predetermination run-off connected Sunday, with pre-poll surveys showing far-right absorption campaigner Jose Antonio Kast starring implicit his centre-left rival, Jeannette Jara.

Kast, who considers United States President Donald Trump a relation model, has made transgression and undocumented migration a centrepiece of his campaign. He has promised to motorboat wide deportations and initiate a sweeping law-and-order docket arsenic portion of his rhetoric to “Make Chile Great Again”.

Jara, the campaigner for the governing left-wing coalition, was narrowly up of Kast successful the archetypal circular past month. The 51-year-old had garnered astir 27 percent of the ballot against Kast, successful 2nd spot with 24 percent of the votes.

Kast, the 59-year-old Republican Party leader, has been capable to mobilise the votes of the defeated opponents from the right-wing camp, making him the favourite going into Sunday’s run-off. Right-wing candidates had collectively secured astir 70 percent of the votes successful the November 16 polls.

Analysts fearfulness Kast’s triumph could alteration the country’s governmental people for the archetypal clip since a instrumentality to ideology 35 years ago. Chileans person agelong prided themselves connected keeping far-right authorities astatine bay aft the extremity of the subject authorities of Augusto Pinochet successful the 1970s and 80s. In his youth, Kast was a keen protagonist of Pinochet.

Rollback of women’s rights

Yet vexation runs heavy among voters, galore of whom consciousness unrepresented by either finalist.

Many voters accidental they cannot bring themselves to ballot for Jara, who is simply a subordinate of Chile’s orthodox Communist Party.

Jara, who served arsenic labour curate nether incumbent President Gabriel Boric, helped walk flagship payment reforms but has struggled to displacement the debate. She present pledges tougher border controls and stronger policing. Still, analysts accidental her communist inheritance limits her appeal.

Leonidas Monte of the Centre for Political Studies said Chileans justice candidates mostly connected rejection rates, adding that “somebody from the Communist Party volition beryllium with a 50 percent oregon supra rejection”.

Jara says she volition resign from the Communist Party if she wins, but that has not convinced immoderate voters.

Questions besides situation whether Kast could present connected his astir ambitious pledges.

He has promised to chopped $6bn successful nationalist spending wrong 18 months without touching societal benefits, deport much than 300,000 undocumented migrants and grow the army’s relation successful warring organised transgression – proposals that revive achy memories of Pinochet’s subject rule.

Kast’s enactment lacks a legislature majority, forcing him to negociate with much mean right-wing allies. Any compromise could dilute his agenda, but failing to enactment swiftly whitethorn alienate supporters drawn to his uncompromising rhetoric.

Chilean Congresswoman Lorena Fries warned that Kast’s societal conservatism could rotation backmost women’s rights. He is moving connected “the accepted logic of accepted household dynamics. Obviously, women volition beryllium astatine a disadvantage compared to men successful the nationalist and particularly the governmental arena,” she told Al Jazeera.

Crime and migration person eclipsed each different issues. Under President Boric, Chile recorded a homicide highest successful 2022 arsenic determination transgression groups exploited undocumented migration routes, though killings person since fallen.

Workers of the Nunoa municipality hole a polling presumption for the statesmanlike predetermination run-off, successful Santiago, connected December 13, 2025 [File: Eitan Abramovich/AFP]

Kast, mindful of past defeats, has avoided incendiary topics specified arsenic his father’s Nazi past and his ain nostalgia for Pinochet. Many supporters accidental concerns astir quality rights present fertile beneath idiosyncratic safety.

Reporting from Santiago, Al Jazeera’s Latin America exertion Lucia Newman said, “Many radical are acrophobic of what volition hap present if Kast wins the presidency, but galore others archer america that they cannot bring themselves to ballot for a communist, and that’s wherefore we’re proceeding that much Chileans than ever earlier are reasoning of casting a blank ballot erstwhile they spell successful present to vote.”

“A ballot that, if polls are right, volition veer Chile successful the aforesaid absorption arsenic galore of its blimpish neighbours,” Newman said.