Voting centers open in Chile for crucial ballot between Boric and Kast

More 2,500 voting centers opened this Sunday in Chile to start the second round of the presidential election in which former left-wing student leader Gabriel Boric and ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast compete to replace conservative Sebastián Piñera.

More than 15 million people are called to vote in this election, the most polarized and decisive for the future of the country since the 1988 plebiscite that removed General Augusto Pinochet from power.

The latest polls agree that Boric would win the ballot with between 5 and 14 points of advantage, although experts affirm that the panorama is very uncertain and that the result will be defined vote by vote, taking into account the narrow margin between the two candidates in the first round: 2 percentage points.

With two candidates bringing more drastic proposals than those of the large center-right and center-left blocs that have been sharing power for three decades, the next president will be either the most leftist since Salvador Allende (1970-1973) or the most right-wing. from Pinochet.

Boric, a 35-year-old deputy -the minimum age to run for office-, linked to the protests for equality in 2019, seeks a welfare state with a feminist, environmentalist and regionalist accent.

closet, a 55-year-old Catholic lawyer, seeks to reduce the role of the state, lower taxes, confront irregular migration with a heavy hand and is against gay marriage and all forms of abortion.

The next president, who will take office in March 2022 for a period of 4 years, will have to heal the wounds left by the social crisis of 2019, a wave of massive protests for equality that left about thirty dead and put the Government in check. current and the security forces.

He will also lead the implementation of the rules of the new Constitution that began to be drafted this year and that could enter into force in 2022, if approved in an exit plebiscite.

Another of the most urgent challenges will be to meet the needs of a working class economically in a hurry after the pandemic and whose social assistance ends this year, in addition to facing an inflation not seen in decades.

Participation is another of the great unknowns: in the first round of November it was only 47% and, according to the latest report by Cadem, a private pollster, one in four voters is not clear about their preference or will not vote.

For Kenneth Bunker, director of the polling station Trequintos, in this election there will be an “age split” (division of vote by age) and the vote of the youngest will be key.

“In the plebiscite for a new Constitution, many more young people voted than older adults and the result was more favorable for ‘Approve’. If it happens again, Boric’s vote will increase “He pointed to Efe.

The polls will close at 18:00 local time (21:00 GMT) and the first results are expected a couple of hours later.

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