The next president of Chile, who will rule the South American country between 2026 and 2030, will be decided between the Izquierda Party’s candidate, communist Janet Jara, and the extremist Derechesta José Antonio Caste, leader of the Republican Party. This is what voters decided on Sunday after the first round of elections. By obtaining 62% of the votes, Jara, the leader of President Gabriel Buric’s body, obtained 26.63%, thanks to his design in the polls. Cast won second place with 24.25% of the votes, which is the minimum distance, which makes him the most likely to achieve victory, as the conservative forces achieved support for the mayor’s presidency. In third place, the surprise of the trip: the right-wing populist Franco Baresi received 19.05% in his third attempt to reach the newspaper La Moneda, replacing the radical liberal Johannes Kaiser, who had 13.94% of his support, falling to fourth place, as well as the major defeat: the traditional leftist Evelyn Matthe, who fell to fifth place (13.204%), contributing to a major failure for Chile. Vamos Alliance.
“I congratulate Janet Jara and José Antonio Cast on their second tour,” said President Boric of La Moneda, accompanied by Interior Minister Alvaro Elizalde and his spokeswoman Camila Vallejo.
The results, in which the Union of Right-wing Forces obtained a significant majority, coincide with the scenario that opinion polls have repeatedly shown: on December 14, about 15.7 million voters who were compulsorily summoned to the polls will be able to elect Buric’s successor between the two political parties. But Jara took first place, but the votes of Kast, Kaiser and Mathie added up to 51%, giving Kast the power to go into the second round. If the percentage of support for Parisi, the populist who opposes Buric, is added, it reaches about 70%, despite the difficulty of deciphering Parisi’s voice, because there is no evidence that it is transferable to the right.
There was a difference between Gaara and Kast, about the points, no one expected to leave. Consecutive polls showed that the 51-year-old public official would receive the most support on Sunday, the 16th of this month, but with a difference of between five points and new points with Cast. His main task was not to win the first round – the official bodies were organized around Jara’s unique candidacy, after the primaries -, but to achieve the majority that would allow him to win the second round, or balloon, on December 14th. According to the polls, which generally carry correct predictions, Jara will lose to Kast, a 59-year-old lawyer. Above all, there is only so much difference between a Republican and a Republican. Therefore, since Sunday evening, he will have to send strong signals to moderate voters, which is what he did this evening to evaluate the proposals of other candidates, such as those of Paris or Mathy. The first expected gesture is for Jara to suspend and freeze his membership in the Communist Party, where he has been registered for 14 years, which will generate great resistance. Moreover, it is expected that there will be a change in its team and the inclusion of personalities that will allow it to convey certainty to the political milieu.
Caste, as we have seen, outperformed Parisi, Mathy, and Kaiser. This is the third time that this extremist has presented himself for the presidency. In the previous elections in 2021, he achieved the first victory, but lost in the ballot box to Buric, the current president. Being extremely conservative when it comes to individual freedoms, such as abortion, Kast promised to Emergency government For Chile with priorities related to security, economic growth, weakening the state – seeking to cut $6,000 million in 18 months – and irregular migration. This evening would depend on the support of the Kaiser, who had a joint electoral agreement for the Congress, and of Mathy, who had gone to visit Caste at his command. The Republican will summarize a large part of the world of the traditional right, gathered in the Chile Vamos coalition. The practical decrees will join forces to prevent Jara from coming to power on March 11, when Buric leaves the government after already completing 40 years.
Indications that the candidates who passed the second round will turn over in the next few hours are key to collecting additions. Jara fell even due to the historical lack of support enjoyed by Buric’s government, with the number of believers at around 30%, but not enough to constitute a majority. In fact, in this first campaign he had to distance himself from the president and his administration, even though she had been Secretary of Labor for a few months. Jara’s mission is enormous, because Chile’s winds are currently blowing in favor of the extreme right, and as has been the case for twenty years, the presidential bloc has always been in favor of blockading the opposition.
Chile has now come to celebrate, as has been the case since the restoration of democracy, a completely normal electoral event. In addition to electing Buric’s successor, voters renewed the entire House of Representatives (155 congressmen) and virtually the Senate seat (23 out of 50 senators from seven districts, including the Capital District). This is the first time since the return of democracy in 1990 that citizens have elected a president through compulsory voting and, at that time, through automatic registration in the census.
Chilean society has been lax in its electoral preferences. After the social explosion of 2019, with extraordinary waves of violence that broke out against the government of moderate right-wing President Sebastián Piñera, voters approved a constitutional path to re-implement Augusto Pinochet’s 1980 constitution, which, however, takes the signature of Socialist President Ricardo Lagos for the reforms published in 2005. Luigo, elected an editorial board dominated by the far left, and when the government of President Buric took office only six months later, he was rejected by 62% against 38% for the text supported by the official. It was a disastrous failure that forced the government to adapt to the new conditions and temper the high expectations it had held in March 2022. After that, a second process of preparing a new constitution was opened, from which the editors triumphed over the entire far-right of the Republican Party, but in 2023, the proposal was again rejected by Chileans by 55% to 42%.
This is what you know by his name Chilean pendulum. They seem like contradictory decisions, but I’m not saying that: society remains disgusted and, above all, deeply discontented with political institutions. Therefore, he has spent decades punishing officials and favoring the opposition, as if trying to believe in change, which never happens. In turn, governments face, in light of a fragmented Congress, serious problems in achieving majorities and achieving legislative agendas. Chileans, who do not trust the government, parties or parliament, participate disappointed in elections that, for the first time, involve compulsory voting. Polls show that Chileans are more worried than hopeful about these elections, and more than half of them agree with this statement “I’m the same person who goes to work, just like I have to go out to work.”
This is Chile, which will welcome its next president in another four months, when he takes office on March 11. With a disloyal electorate, who have not maintained their support for long, and who are largely intimidated by the arrival of transnational organized crime. It is part of the social landscape that demonstrates the atmosphere that drives extremist discourses such as Caste and, consequently, the difficulties faced by the Left.
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