Far-Right Candidate José Antonio Kast Wins Chile’s Presidential Election by a Wide Margin
According to preliminary data, the 59-year-old ultra-Catholic former deputy obtained 58.61% of the votes. Below José Antonio Kast, the Republican and Social Christian Party’s presidential candidate, arrives to vote this Sunday in Paine, Chile. Kast won the Chilean presidency, defeating leftist Jeannette Jara by a wide margin of almost 20 points, with 57.4% of the votes counted, according to figures from the Electoral Service.
Far-right candidate José Antonio Kast won the Chilean presidential election on Sunday, defeating leftist Jeannette Jara by a wide margin, with 83.4% of the votes counted. According to preliminary data from the Electoral Service (Servel), the 59-year-old ultra-Catholic former deputy obtained 58.61% of the votes compared to 41.39% for the 51-year-old former minister of Gabriel Boric. The founder of the Republican Party won in all 16 regions of the country, including left-wing strongholds such as Valparaíso and the Metropolitan Region, which houses the capital, and swept the mining areas of the north and the agricultural areas of the south.
“We received a call from Jara a few minutes ago,” said Arturo Squella, Kast’s right-hand man and president of the Republican Party. “We are very proud of the work done, and very responsible for this tremendous sacrifice of taking charge of the crises that Chile is going through,” Squella added. It is the second largest victory since the return to democracy, after the 24.3 point victory of former progressive president Michelle Bachelet over conservative Evelyn Matthei in 2013. Kast, who campaigned in favor of the continuity of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) in the 1988 plebiscite, is the first Pinochet supporter to reach La Moneda in democracy.
The first and only right-winger to come to power so far, since the return to democracy, has been the late Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014 and 2018-2022), who voted against the dictator’s continued rule. A father of 9 children and a devout Catholic, Kast will receive the presidential sash on March 11 from the progressive Gabriel Boric, his opponent in the 2021 elections and against whom he lost by a wide margin four years ago. Since 2006, power has alternated between left and right, and no president has handed over the presidential sash to a successor of the same political persuasion.
The campaign has focused almost exclusively on the rise in crime and irregular migration, even though Chile remains one of the safest countries on the continent, with a homicide rate of 6 per 100,000 inhabitants. Kast, with strong ties to other far-right leaders in the region, has promised the mass expulsion of migrants, criminalizing migration, and building maximum-security prisons with total isolation for drug trafficking leaders. The far-right politician, who on his third attempt managed to reach La Moneda, will have to deal with a legislature without majority forces , where the right-wing and far-right bloc is two deputies short of a majority in Congress (76 out of 155) and tied with the left in the Senate.
