The radical right candidate and the leftist candidate will meet again at the polls on December 19.
With 71.45% of the polls scrutinized, it has already been defined that the far-right José Antonio Kast and the left-wing deputy Gabriel Boric will contest the Presidency of Chile in the ballot on December 19 after achieving 28.30% and the 25.07% of the votes, respectively.
It is the first time since the return to democracy in 1990 that the traditional center-left and center-right parties did not go through to the second round.
Both have very different programs, which will force Chileans to choose in December between the most left-wing government since Salvador Allende (1970-1973) or the most right-wing since the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).
Boric, a 35-year-old MP and former student leader who defines himself as an ecologist, feminist and regionalist, wants to expand the role of the state towards a welfare model similar to that of Europe.
For his part, Kast, a 55-year-old Catholic lawyer, seeks to reduce the role of the state, lower taxes, tackle irregular migration with a heavy hand and ban gay marriage and all forms of abortion.
Boric prevails in the capital with more than 31% of the votes and with a difference of almost 7 points over Kast, although there are still more tables to be scrutinized than in the rest of the country.
Parisi, the surprise
The controversial libertarian economist Franco Parisi, who resides in the United States and has not even traveled to Chile for the elections, continues to be the surprise of the day, with 13.31% of the votes, according to the latest count.
Parisi thus displaces the ruling party and former minister Sebastián Sichel (12.08%) to fourth place and pushes the Christian Democrat Yasna Provoste to fifth position (12.26%), according to
“The center-left will not be in the second round and that is painful for a political project like ours that has always thought about how to have an alternative to a neoliberal model,” said Provoste, who left his support for Boric on the air in the ballot.
Who did announce it was the Socialist Party, his coalition partner in the old Concertación. “We call on Chileans not to belittle the threat posed by an option of the extreme right as a possible president in our country,” said its president, Álvaro Elizalde.
“I am not going to vote in the second round for Gabriel Boric (…) I do not want the extreme left to win in Chile,” added Sichel, who did not clarify whether he will ask to vote for Kast and announced that he is temporarily withdrawing from the politics.
Much further behind and with less than 8% of the votes, are the progressive Marco Enríquez-Ominami and Eduardo Artés, from the radical left.
The more than 15 million Chileans called to the polls this Sunday also chose the 155 deputies for a period of four years and 27 of the 50 senators for a period of eight, although the results of this election will take longer to come out. (I)
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