More than 15 million Chileans This Sunday they have in their hands a decision of high political and symbolic impact. They must choose at the polls between José Antonio Kast and Jeannette Jara. On the one hand, a beloved son of Pinochetism. On the other hand, a candidate who belongs to the Communist Party (PC) and former minister of the Government of Gabriel Boric. They have no similarities in appearance. Both are, however, the symptom of a disenchanted society with the results of 35 years of institutionality. Only one can access the Palacio de La Moneda on March 11. Previous polls give the far-right the greatest possibilities. Kast has behaved in the electoral campaign as a virtual winner. But surveys have shown how unreliable they can be in certain circumstances. No consulting firm considered that Franco Parisi, of the center-right People’s Party (PDG), could obtain almost 20% of the votes in the first round. This mistake opens the possibility, perhaps distant, that another surprise could reveal the scrutiny on Sunday night.
Beyond prevention, based on a verifiable fact (many citizens are increasingly reluctant to tell the truth to a pollster), are the numbers from November 16. Jara was barely 378,000 votes ahead of Kast, just 2.9 points. If the three competitors from the right of the first round are added, the Republican candidate, Evelyn Mattheiand the mileist Johannes Kaiser, That ideological space accounted for 50.32% of the accessions. And some of Parisi’s voters might be inclined to give Kast a chance. The outlook, in principle, is very discouraging for the progressive conglomerate that decided to accompany the PC standard bearer. The former minister’s appeals to civic responsibility and calls to avoid the return of the last dictatorship’s program could improve her performance. The possibility of a political miracle does not seem to convince analysts.
Kast and Jara had their last television debate days ago. The son of a former lieutenant in the Nazi army and brother of an important collaborator of the general Augusto Pinochet It was presented once again as the alternative for “change” or continuity with another, friendlier face of Boric’s management. As he has been doing in recent weeks, he tried to avoid the thorniest issues such as his Trumpian promise to expel immigrants en masse or the pardon for the former Army brigadier Miguel Krassnoff, sentenced to 1,060 years in prison for numerous cases of human rights violations between 1973 and 1976, the harshest years of dictatorial repression.
Jara was vehement and did not stop pointing out his rival’s contradictions. However, he acted in front of the cameras as if he knew that his fate was already cast..
Frustration and tiredness
The Boric era, led by a group of former university students, did not live up to its promises. The Government was wounded after the defeat in the popular consultation of the Magna Carta in September 2022 and was never able to recover. The president’s weight is 30%and Kast, like a fisherman of obfuscates, collected with his rhetorical net all those who want to turn the page. The Republican candidate has been more immune to his own setbacks. In fact, the second constitutional text, prepared in the image and likeness of the extreme right in 2023, to the point of being called the “Kastitution“, was also rejected in a plebiscite. This did not call into question the presidential ambitions at any time. of the main reference of the extreme right.
Kast’s electoral competitiveness is also, according to some observers, clear evidence of a end of the cycle started in 1990 that hadFurthermore, as collateral damage, the collapse of the political center that expressed Christian Democracy. Former president Eduardo Frei He governed in the name of the Concertación forged between his party and the social democracy between 1994 and 2000. He is convinced that His father, also former president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, was assassinated by Pinochet. That certainty has not prevented him from supporting Kast’s candidacy, ignoring his own party’s exhortation to vote for Jara. At another time, Frei Tagle’s attitude would have provoked greater controversies. If that has not happened, it is because Both the figure of the former dictator and his work were little present in the campaign beyond Jara’s warnings. His attempt to install the dilemma “democracy or fascism”which in some way organized the wills and desires of citizens since the 1988 plebiscite that sealed Pinochet’s fate until 2021, has at one point been displaced by the antagonisms that became visible in 2022
The advantage in the polls of the far-right Kast has at this point political, cultural, economic and communication components. The recent Laboratories for Democracy survey shows that Chileans’ feelings of dissatisfaction are expressed as sadness (39%), fear (21%) and disgust (14%). These states of mind, it is pointed out, hinder the development of a democratic culture. 49% of those consulted are not happy with the functioning of the institutionsagainst 48% who approve.
The perceptions
“Fear” has become a determining factor in electoral preferences. Kast is the champion of the strong hand and the military presence in the streets. It has capitalized on the feeling of insecurity in a country whose homicide and crime rates place it among the least dangerous in the region. It is not, however, what Chileans “perceive”, for whom violence in turn has the sign of the foreign: Venezuelan, Peruvian, Bolivian or Haitian. That fear does not correspond to the prosecutor’s figures for 2025: Only 10.4% of people charged in Chile are of foreign origin.
For the OECD it is one of the most unequal member countries in income and opportunities: the richest 10% earn up to 27 times more than the poorest 10%. But that issue has been out of discussion and Kast has managed to impose that there is a disastrous economic situation that calls for a Milei-style adjustment. “Chile is not falling apart. Nothing could be further from reality“he told the portal The Counter Gabriela Clivio, an academic at the Catholic University. “It is a phrase used in the campaign as a hobby horse, it implies that we do not know that we have an autonomous Central Bank, macroeconomic stability, that we have solid fiscal fundamentals.” The major rating agencies, including Standard & Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s, nevertheless agree on the stable outlook for the South American country and its low level of debt. Jara’s spokesman, Francisco Vidal, recognized the “brutal level” of citizen disinformation. “If you generate expectations for that distressed population and the next day nothing happens, what do you generate? Anger, distance.”
Subscribe to continue reading
