Chile's presidential election

Kast and Boric proceed to second round, as expected


On November 21st Chile held its presidential and congressional elections. As we had expected, José Antonio Kast of the far-right Frente Social Cristiano coalition and Gabriel Boric of the leftist Apruebo Dignidad were the victors in the presidential race and will face each other in a run-off scheduled for December 19th. The main takeaways from the vote were a better than expected performance by right-of-centre candidates, which suggests that Mr Kast is slightly ahead in the run-off vote, and a divided Congress, which implies poor governability regardless of who wins.

Mr Kast and Mr Boric had 27.9% and 25.8% of the vote respectively, and were followed by an outsider candidate, Franco Parisi of the centre-right populist Partido de la Gente, and Sebastián Sichel of the governing centre-right Chile Podemos coalition, with 12.8% support each. Contrary to other recent elections—including the constituent assembly and regional elections—where the right-wing underperformed, yesterday’s elections saw the three right-wing candidates (Mr Kast, Mr Parisi and Mr Sichel) account for 53.5% of valid votes, partly reflecting campaigns that centred on the risk of a return to extreme left-wing politics under Mr Boric.

In pre-election polling of a Boric-Kast run-off, Mr Boric was consistently ahead. But the recent spurt in popularity of right-wing candidates bodes well for Mr Kast’s second-round campaign. However, Mr Kast has a more extreme platform than either Mr Parisi or Mr Sichel, and it is by no means guaranteed that their voters will automatically switch allegiance to Mr Kast.

The election result highlighted the fragmentation and polarisation of Chilean politics following the collapse of the two centre-left and centre-right coalitions that dominated politics for decades post-dictatorship. Governability will prove difficult irrespective of who wins in the second round, owing to the make-up of Congress, which is fairly evenly divided between left- and right-wing parties. Neither Mr Boric nor Mr Kast would have a majority. This will provide some sort of policy backstop but is also likely to lead to legislative gridlock in many areas.

The election result will have particularly important implications for the constitutional reform process. Mr Kast opposes rewriting the constitution, and his own policy agenda differs markedly from that of the left-leaning constituent assembly. If he does win, we would expect a combative political environment in Congress and outside it. If the new constitution is approved by referendum in 2022, Mr Kast would not pursue enabling legislation. In this environment, post-election unrest would complicate matters further and tarnish governability going into 2022.

The first round suggests that the presidential race is finely balanced but tilted in favour of Mr Kast. Whoever wins will probably be victorious because of fears over the return to power of the extreme right or extreme left. Governability challenges and policy uncertainty will be extremely high whoever wins, and the next year at least will be a difficult one for Chile.

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