SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — As Chileans voted on Sunday, even detractors of ultra-conservative former lawmaker José Antonio Kast said the candidate whose radical ideas lost him the past two elections was likely to become the country's next leader.
Kast’s commanding lead in the polls over his rival in the presidential runoff, communist Jeannette Jara, shows how the hard-liner agitating for mass deportations of immigrants has seized the mantle of the traditional right in a country that once defined its post-dictatorship democratic revival with a vow to contain such political forces.
Vowing a harsh security crackdown to address heightened fears about uncontrolled immigration and crime, Kast's popularity has surged in recent months.
“Just because he's the most right-wing we've seen in decades doesn't mean that it's a dictatorship, that's what the left wants you to believe,” said Juan Beltran, 68, a taxi driver who voted for Kast in hopes he stops the frequent violent carjackings that make him scared to go to work each day. “It means that he'll have an iron fist, and take action like others haven't."
While casting his ballot on Sunday, Kast demonstrated respect for Chile’s democratic institutions.
“Chile has a tradition, and I am very clear that whoever wins, whether Jeannette Jara or me, will have to be president of all Chileans,” he told the hundreds of supporters thronging him.
Many voters are frustrated with the options
But much is also up for grabs about Chile’s political direction.
If Kast ends up winning, his claim to a popular mandate will depend on his margin of victory over Jara, the center-left governing party candidate who narrowly beat him in the first round of elections last month.
Although various right-wing parties won around 70% of the vote in that election and later endorsed Kast, substantial support for Franco Parisi — a populist center-right candidate who described himself as an alternative to Kast’s “fascism” — revealed that, between the contrasting ideologies of the front-runners, sit hundreds of thousands of centrist voters with no real representation. Many Kast and Jara voters said they were picking the “least bad option.”
“Neither candidate convinced me, I wanted someone moderate with a clear plan and better political credentials,” said Carol Mesa, 54, emerging from a polling station in Santiago, Chile's capital, where she said she reluctantly voted for Kast after supporting a center-right candidate eliminated in the first round of elections.
“The polarization in our society scares me. It's at a level that I haven't seen in a very long time."
Kast raises expectations but reality is a different story
Even if elected, it remains uncertain whether Kast, an admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump, can implement his more grandiose promises.
That includes slashing $6 billion in public spending over just 18 months without eliminating social benefits, deporting over 300,000 immigrants in Chile who don't have legal status and expanding the powers of the army to fight organized crime in a country still haunted by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’smilitary dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.
For one, Kast’s far-right Republican Party lacks a majority in Congress, meaning that he’ll need to negotiate with moderate right-wing forces that could bristle at those proposals. Political compromises could temper Kast’s radicalism, but also jeopardize his position with voters who expect him to deliver quickly on his law-and-order promises.
At each rally, Kast has taken to ticking off the number of days remaining until Chile's March 11 presidential inauguration, warning immigrants without papers that they should get out before they "have to leave with just the clothes on their backs.”
Jorge Rubio, 63, a Chilean banker in Santiago said he and like-minded Chileans are “also counting down the days," adding, “That’s why we’re voting for Kast."
Boric's left-wing government is under fire
As the pandemic shuttered borders, transnational criminal organizations like Venezuela's Tren de Aragua took over migrant smuggling networks to gain a foothold in Chile, long considered among Latin America's safest countries. Homicides hit a record high in 2022, the first year of President Gabriel Boric’s tenure.
Boric’s approval rating plunged from 50% to 30% within just months of him taking office, and never fully recovered.
Kast insists that Boric’s government is too soft on immigration, which the far-right politician argues is the main cause of crime. The data does not necessarily support his narrative. But relentless tabloid and television coverage does, Chileans say.
“Unlike this government, Kast understands that migration means insecurity,” said Manuel Troncoso, 54, after voting at a high school down the street from President Boric's home. “You see in the news how the people committing the worst crimes come from other countries.”
Others say that while Boric failed to fulfill his flagship promise to transform Chile’s market-led economy, the firebrand former student protest leader elected in 2021 succeed in refocusing his agenda to address the country's security crisis. He sent the military to reinforce Chile’s northern border, stiffened penalties for organized crime and created the first public security ministry.
“I actually thought this government would be worse. I have to admit it has improved security,” said Mariano Jara, 55, emerging from a polling station.
He said he voted for Kast because "there’s always more that can be done. There’s room to get tougher.”
Chile’s homicide rate has actually fallen in the last two years, and is now on par with the rate in the United States. But that hasn't changed citizens' widespread feeling of insecurity.
According to a recent Gallup survey, just 39% of people feel safe walking alone at night. That's about the same in Ecuador, which is now in the midst of a violent, drug-driven crime wave.
As Boric's former minister of labor, Jara became popular as the architect of the administration's most important welfare measures.
As she voted in her family's working-class neighborhood of Conchali, supporters shouted out her accomplishments, including shortening the workweek to 40 hours, increasing the minimum wage and overhauling the pension system. “Forty hours!” they chanted.
But those accomplishments haven't won Jara new supporters. Many centrists are put off by her lifelong membership in Chile's Communist Party.
To woo security-minded voters, Jara has vowed to reinforce borders, register undocumented migrants and tackle money laundering.
“To me, she represents continuity, and Kast represents Trump,” said María Rojo, 71, waving at Jara as she drove off from the polling station. “Of course, that's why I support her. I know others feel the opposite.”
Learning from his previous two failed presidential runs, Kast, a devout Catholic and father of nine, has managed to avoid topics that fire up his critics — such as his German-born father’s Nazi past, nostalgia for Pinochet's dictatorship and opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion.
His supporters now include many Chileans who previously spurned him over deeply conservative values. They say they're willing to trade abstract human rights concerns for increased safety on the streets.
“It's not very nice to hear that he's going to separate immigrant children from their parents, it's sad,” said Natacha Feliz, a 27-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic, referring to a recent interview in which Kast warned that immigrant parents without legal status who didn’t self-deport would be obliged to hand their kids over to the state.
“But this is happening everywhere, not just in Chile," she said. "Let's just hope that our security situation improves."
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Associated Press writer Nayara Batschke in Santiago, Chile, contributed to this report.