On November 19, Chileans will go to the polls to elect the nation’s new president, who will govern until 2030. If none of the candidates reach the required number of votes, the top two will compete in runoff elections on December 14. However, before the candidates are officially determined, the Chilean electoral system requires that primary elections be held on June 29 to determine who will seek to occupy the presidential seat.
Therefore, the progressive government of Gabriel Boric is entering its final stretch, attempting to secure his successor in the Executive – something that no government has achieved in the past 20 years, that is, having its party or coalition win two consecutive presidential elections. Indeed, since 2006, when then-president Ricardo Lagos handed over the presidential sash to Michelle Bachelet, the pattern of the Chilean electorate seems to lean towards the alternation of political power.
Boric’s government received a hard blow when it lost the plebiscite that sought to transform the Chilean constitution in 2022. After that, many analysts have agreed that his government has been characterized by being more pragmatic through agreements with the traditional right wing to achieve, for example, pension reform. Perhaps, following the example of Bachelet and Piñeira, Boric could attempt to return to La Moneda in the future (you cannot serve two consecutive terms but you can serve two terms with a break between the two).
The polls favor the right
For now, despite the efforts of Chilean progressivism, the polls give a clear advantage to the right wing. According to the marketing and political communication company CRITERIA, if the elections were held tomorrow, the big winner of a possible first round would be the former mayor of Providencia, Evelyn Matthei, of the right-wing coalition Chile Vamos, who would reach 31% of the votes. Matthei is one of the Chilean right wing’s most important figures since, apart from being mayor, she served as a deputy and senator, as well as Secretary of Labor in the government of Sebastián Piñera.
According to the same pollster, the recent favorite, José Antonio Kast, would reach 15% of the votes. Kast, an ultra-conservative politician, won the first electoral round of the 2021 presidential elections, but lost the second round to Boric. The Republican Party candidate already tried to win the presidency in 2017, so this would be his third electoral bid for La Moneda. Kast has distinguished himself from the rest of the Chilean political establishment for his controversial comments and many see in him a politician who is ideologically close to Donald Trump.
In third place, CRITERIA marks a 9% tie between the far-right Johannes Kaiser (Libertarian Party) and Carolina Tohá, part of the current government’s coalition. Kaiser is the deputy of Santiago de Chile. His popularity is based on his acid criticisms and polemic comments on various topics, such as the role of the State, which, according to him, should be reduced to the minimum expression (a position for which he has been compared to the Argentinean President Javier Milei), and the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which he has praised, among others.
For her part, Tohá served as Minister of the Interior in Boric’s government and is from the Party for Democracy. She also was the Secretary of Government during Michelle Bachelet’s administration and mayor of Santiago between 2021 and 2016. Many have labeled her a centrist who actively participates in the coalition governments of the center-left. This is probably why Boric has decided that she will take part in the upcoming election that seems likely to lean to the right.
Also included in the polls is the possible return to politics of former President Bachelet, who, for now, has 6% of voting intentions. Although she has not yet made her candidacy official (and many doubt that she will do so), Bachelet knows Chile’s political electoral terrain very well and could climb rapidly in the polls if she decides to participate. With less than 2% are the rest of the candidates (Enríquez-Ominami, Vodanovic, Jadue, and Jara) who, for now, do not seem to have real possibilities of winning the presidency of the South American country, although their support to one or another candidate could influence a country that seems to trust in multi-party coalitions.
However, it is still too early to determine which presidential candidate is most likely to win the election. Despite what polls currently show, Chile is capable of electoral surprises, as seen in the last four years, so nothing is set in stone for now.
