The ultraconservative lawyer, José Antonio Kast, is in pole position to become Chile’s next leader after advancing to the second round of the South American country’s presidential election where he will face the Communist party candidate Jeannette Jara.
With more than 70% of votes counted, Kast had secured about 24% of the vote in Sunday’s first round vote, having campaigned on hard-line promises to crack down on crime and immigration, while making a Donald Trump-style pledge to “put Chileans first”.
Jara won slightly more support, with about 26% of votes going to the former labor minister for Chile’s outgoing centre-left president, Gabriel Boric. But other right-wing candidates took almost 30% of votes meaning Kast is now the clear favourite to win the run-off on 14 December.
Shortly after the result became clear on Sunday night, the radical libertarian Johannes Kaiser, another right-wing candidate who took about 14% of votes, announced he would endorse his far-right rival, “because the alternative is Mrs Jara” and Chile’s “lefty impoverishers”.
Evelyn Matthei, another conservative who won about 13% of votes, quickly followed suit, citing the “absolutely uncontrolled arrival” of migrants and claiming Chile needed a “sharp change of direction”.
“Please support Kast … It’s super important that this government does not remain in power. We have too many problems,” Matthei told voters while on stage beside the frontrunner.
Boric congratulated both candidates for making it to the second round after what Chile’s president called a “spectacular day of democracy”.
Speaking in the capital, Santiago, Jara thanked supporters and urged them not to forget that Chile was a great country, despite her right-wing rivals’ attempts to claim it had gone to the dogs.
Kast, 59, is making his third run for Chile’s presidency, having lost to Boric in 2021, and has built his campaign around two key promises: combating crime and immigration.
One of Kast’s Trumpian plans – called Escudo Fronterizo (Border Shield) – foresees the construction of miles of ditches, barriers and walls along Chile’s northern border to keep migrants out. More than half a million Venezuelans have come to Chile in recent years as a result of their country’s economic collapse. “Chile has been invaded … but this is over,” Kast declared in one campaign ad.
In October, Kast celebrated that 1.6 million migrants had “self-deported” from the US after 500,000 were deported under Trump.
“That’s [a proportion of] three-to-one. Here, we think that it can be four-to-one, or five-to-one,” he said of his plans to create a hostile environment for immigrants in Chile.
Another of Kast’s key pledges is a crackdown on foreign criminals, inspired by El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele, who has imprisoned at least 2% of his country’s adult population since 2022. Public security has become one of the election’s central issues thanks to an increase in crimes such as assassinations, kidnapping and extortion, although Chile remains one of the region’s safest countries.
Kast’s progress will be celebrated in Washington, where Trump officials such as secretary of state Marco Rubio have hailed a conservative wave they believe is sweeping South America. Last month, neighbouring Bolivia elected a centre-right president after 20 years of socialist rule. Rightwing candidates look well placed to win presidential elections in Colombia and Peru next year, while the leftwing veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces a tough battle to hang on to the presidency in Brazil despite ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s recent sentencing for masterminding a failed coup.
