Kast and Boric start the race for the center ahead of the ballot in Chile

With an abstention of 53% and more than 30% of the electorate opting for more moderate options, the candidates who will compete for the Chilean Presidency in December, the far-right José Antonio Kast and the leftist Gabriel Boric, begin the race for key voters on Monday to get to La Moneda: the political center.

The Catholic lawyer of the Republican Party prevailed with 27.9% and by just over 150,000 votes to the deputy and former student leader (25.8%), the letter of the Broad Front and the Communist Party.

It is the first time since the return to democracy in 1990 that the traditional center-left and center-right parties have been left out of the fray and that two very different models of the country will be fought at the ballot box.

For Kenneth Bunker, director of the Tresquintos pollster, “the vast majority of Chileans consider themselves centrists, in favor of gradual changes“And, with Sunday’s results,”they have run out of candidate”.

Kast, strong in northern and southern regions, defends the neoliberal model installed during the dictatorship (1973-1990) and gives a harsh anti-immigration discourse, based on order and traditional values. His references are Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and more than once he has defended General Augusto Pinochet.

Boric, meanwhile, yearns for a welfare state similar to the European one, with a feminist and environmentalist accent. It became strong in the capital, although it failed to permeate the working classes of the periphery.

“We are witnessing an emptying of the political center“Mauricio Morales, from the University of Talca, told Efe.

“Vote by vote”

It has always been said that whoever gets the most votes in the first round reaches La Moneda (seat of Government) -something that has been happening since 1999-, but this time it is different because the difference between the two candidates is pyrrhic.

“The second round will be very close and they will fight vote by vote”Said Claudia Heiss, an academic at the University of Chile.

According to the Cadem poll published this Monday, Kast and Boric would tie in December with 39% of votes each. Aware of the uncertain scenario, the candidates strive to attract new support and build “large majorities”.

“We always argue that our program was not set in stone, that there are things that can be modified. We want to meet everyone because we risk the future of Chile”, Kast indicated this Monday in his first public act after the elections.

“There is no one left over in the unit that we have to build to win. It will be a narrow and difficult election, ”Boric acknowledged Sunday night.

And the votes of Parisi?

After them, the right-wing ruling party Sebastián Sichel and the center-left Christian Democrat Yasna Provoste came in fourth and fifth, with 12.69% and 11.66%, respectively.

Sichel already said that he was not going to ask for the vote for Boric and that he was leaving the door open to do so for the ultraconservative. In ambiguous statements, Provoste avoided supporting the leftist, although his party later clarified that it will define its position at an upcoming national meeting.

Who did square with the deputy was the Socialist Party, the coalition partner of the Christian Democrats and a member of the old Concertación. “We call on Chileans not to belittle the threat posed by the extreme right”, Indicated its president, Álvaro Elizalde.

According to Morales, Boric will find it “more difficult” to gather the support of the entire center-left, while the right “he will quickly gather around Kast” because it is “More disciplined”.

The great unknown is what 12.8% of the voters of Franco Parisi will do, a controversial economist who surprisingly came third, despite not even setting foot in Chile and campaigning on social networks from his residence in Alabama, United States. Kast and Boric have already winked at him.

In the 2013 elections, the last to which he ran, Parisi did not position himself for any candidate, although 70% of his electorate went to the conservative Evelyn Matthei, who lost against the socialist Michelle Bachelet. Chile today is far from back then and no one knows exactly where their votes will go.

Para hot, “Parisi’s voter is hard to rank”, Although he is the candidate who has best capitalized on the punishment of political parties, both new and old.