José Antonio Kast is the new elected president of Chile. The Republican candidate won by more than 16 points over the communist candidate Jeannette Jara and will become the first far-right leader to govern the country since the return of democracy in 1990. We look back at the keys to this Sunday’s second round in eight graphs.
Kast wins over most of the territory
The far-right candidate won throughout the country: he won in 310 of the 346 municipalities, making the electoral card blue.
By territories, Kast won in all regions. In Ñuble, La Araucanía, Maule and Los Lagos he exceeded 65% of the votes. Jara achieved his best results in the Santiago metropolitan area, Valparaíso, Coquimbo and Atacama, some of the strongholds where Gabriel Boric won four years ago, but without enough support to win in any of them.
The second biggest victory of the last democratic period
The ultraconservatives won by 16 points, the second largest difference recorded in a presidential runoff. She is only surpassed by the victory of the socialist Michelle Bachelet in 2013, when she was 24.3 points ahead of the right-wing Evelyn Matthei.
The highest turnout since the restoration of democracy
Turnout reached 85%, the highest in a runoff and just 0.2 points below the record recorded in the first round in November. These high participation rates are due to the fact that these were the first presidential elections with compulsory voting and automatic registration in the census. Previously, suffrage was voluntary.
The concentration of votes on the right boosts Kast
Kast’s victory can be explained by two keys, according to the polls. He managed to retain all his support from the first round – 23.9% of the total voters – and, in addition, he attracted more than half of the voters of Franco Parisi, who came in third place with almost 20% of the vote.
Jara, on the other hand, retained a large part of the votes of the three least voted candidates, who in the first round had barely gathered an insufficient score of 3%.
Kast prevails cross-sectionally according to sex and age
The ultra-conservative would have been the favorite candidate of men and women, with similar support rates between the two groups, according to the last Activa poll carried out before the second round.
By age, the panorama is similar. Kast would have prevailed in all age groups: there would have been around 40% support (taking into account abstainers and undecideds) among those under 30 and 50% among those over this age. Jara would have been more competitive among the younger guys.
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