Quite predictably, the Chilean presidential election ended with the landslide victory of the ultra-conservative candidate José Antonio Kast over the communist and all-left candidate Jeannette Jara. Even the scale of the victory is not surprising: with a margin of almost 58% to 42%, Kast’s victory was so overwhelming that it cannot be explained solely by the powerful anti-borist current that has been running through Chile for a long time (of which the left was never aware, nor the government). With this victory for the candidate from the entire right, a cycle of six years of history comes to an end, closing for who knows how long the Chilean dream of social change.
This cycle began with the social epidemic of October 2019, in which millions of Chileans participated in peaceful protests, which was recorded by surveys (adherence to this volcanic event, whose name describes it perfectly, was very high). Its degradation into nihilistic violence was so traumatic that, according to my hypothesis, the left still pays very dearly today for its ambiguity in the face of what was a real spell. To emerge from this imposing crisis, the political parties found no other way than to direct the massive protests towards a process of modifying the Constitution, which began with a first plebiscite in October 2020 (80% of Chileans voted in favor of changing the Constitution through an assembly of conventional members elected by voluntary universal suffrage, but with 50% abstention). This result was correct and reflects the best of Chilean politics in a crisis situation: the fateful outcome is another matter. After this first plebiscite, a Constitutional Convention of 155 members was elected in May 2021, entirely dominated by all types of left, notably by an ultra-left list known as the People’s List (although with 57% abstention from the electorate, which was ignored in favor of all kinds of overinterpretations of this constituent assembly). This recurring abstentionism should have alerted us that everything was not exactly a dream and that many Chileans were indifferent and upset by what was happening in the country. Between the social breakdown and during the Convention, a dream of social transformation was built, which many Chileans felt as a refoundation. It was a very performative Convention in identities and behaviors, a theatricalization that accompanied from start to finish the entire process of developing a new constitutional text: to get an idea of this performance, there was a proposal to abolish the three powers of the State, an unimaginable thing, a crazy idea that obtained no support. What is important to understand, and which is often forgotten, is that a large number of left-wing conventionalists came to this Convention, who repeatedly expressed their particularity: that of never having been active in parties, and of never having been heard throughout their lives, neither as activists nor as people. If this could be a dream, well, there are very good reasons to understand its genesis.
The election of a young president of the new left, Gabriel Boric, contributed powerfully to maintaining this dream of social change, winning in 2021 against the same Kast candidate of 2025 with a margin of ten points (55%-45%, but again with an abstention rate of around 45%). However, everything began to collapse with the exit plebiscite during which we sought to approve a new Constitution with a compulsory vote: this is how in 2022, 62% of voters and with 85% participation rejected the new text. With this result, the Chilean dream began to collapse, which was confirmed with the election of a new assembly (a Constitutional Council) entirely dominated by the right, under the leadership of the far-right Republican Party. It is true that this Council was frankly inconsequential, the right-wing text of which was also massively rejected by a compulsory vote during a second exit plebiscite.
It is in this context that the figure of José Antonio Kast is consolidated. His election as new president in December 2025 is the almost logical result of six years of history: it is as if history had naturally given birth to a creature of which we do not know whether it will be a familiar figure in Chilean politics or a beast. What aggravates this situation for the left is that in the first round a truly populist candidate emerged (Franco Parisi) promoted by the People’s Party, who obtained almost 20% of the votes, and above all a new figure from the libertarian extreme right Johannes Kaiser with 14%. It took something very bad to happen in Chile in the last six years for two far-right candidates to secure a whopping 38% of the vote in the first round.
The left must approach everything that happened with political and intellectual honesty: in this act of reflexivity, there should be no limits, given the drama of what has just happened. There is no guarantee that the left will live up to this serious defeat. For the moment, it is not a question of reconfiguring the Chilean dream. It is about surviving in a global climate of hostility towards representative democracy, what is called “illiberalism”.
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