Communist and far-right politicians battle for Chile’s presidency in election dominated by crime and immigration

By Michael Rios, Cristopher Ulloa, Mauricio Torres, CNN

(CNN) — Chile faces a stark range of candidates in Sunday’s presidential election where the frontrunners include a longtime Communist Party member and two ultraconservatives.

As the country grapples with growing crime rates, surging immigration and discontent with the policies of the leftist President Gabriel Boric, some analysts expect voters to choose a different direction for the South American nation. But just how different remains unclear.

Here’s a look at who’s running and their campaign pledges.

Who are the candidates?

On the ballot are eight candidates with at least three frontrunners including José Antonio Kast, an ultraconservative politician who has promised to make Chile great again; Johannes Kaiser, a libertarian who is considered even more radical than Kast; and Jeannette Jara, a longtime Communist Party member who has been distancing herself from the leftist government.

Leading the polls is Jara, a 51-year-old Communist Party member and former labor minister under the leftist Boric administration.

Despite being the only candidate for Chile’s left-wing coalition, she doesn’t have an uncontested path to the presidency. Her ties to the unpopular Boric administration have weighed her down, so much so that she has been gradually distancing herself from her own party – even hinting that she might suspend her Communist Party membership if elected president.

She’s running on a promise to drive development through domestic production, protect workers’ rights, and raise the minimum wage. She has also acknowledged the country’s security concerns, saying it ought to build more jails, boost law enforcement numbers, and secure its borders with more advanced technology.

Her closest rival, according to most polls, is Kast, a far-right politician often compared by analysts to Donald Trump. Many of his policies mirror those of the US president, including his proposal to close the borders and remove some 300,000 people who entered Chile irregularly.

Kast has always opposed abortion rights, same-sex marriage and immigration, and in a previous presidential run, he proposed digging trenches in several parts of the northern border to prevent irregular immigration.

Four years ago, the Associated Press (AP) reported that his German-born father had been a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, but that issue has not come up much during this race. Kast has repeatedly denied that his father was a supporter of the Nazi party, describing him instead as a forced conscript in the German army. CNN has reached out to his party for comment on AP’s reporting.

Kast founded Chile’s Republican Party in 2019 and is widely credited for bringing extreme right positions to the national stage. But in the final weeks of campaigning, another ultraconservative emerged – one that some consider more radical than Kast.

Kaiser, a YouTuber turned politician, gained traction in the final months of the election with his hardline proposals which include a free market economy, austerity measures and tougher penalties for criminals.

In a recent interview with Agence France-Presse, the far-right politician proposed sending immigrants with criminal records to El Salvador’s notorious prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot.

Dissatisfied with Chile’s Republican Party, Kaiser and four other deputies founded in 2024 a new right-wing party linked to libertarian ideas.

In an interview with CNN Chile in February 2024, Kaiser said his presidential campaign is further to the right than that of Kast, declaring, “to my right is Genghis Khan.”

What is at stake?

Insecurity is arguably the biggest issue in the South American country, where the number of victims of crimes has been steadily increasing since 2021, according to the National Institute of Statistics.

“I believe that in the elections in Chile, as in many Latin American countries, the issue of security is central, without a doubt: the fight against organized crime, against criminal gangs, all these laments of a society that feels held hostage by the high levels of drug trafficking and other activities,” Luz Araceli González, professor of International Relations at Tecnológico de Monterrey, told CNN.

All candidates have promised to get tougher on crime, but so far it remains to be seen whose proposals resonate most with voters.

If no candidate obtains more than half of the votes on Sunday, the two frontrunners will go to a runoff election on December 14, according to Chilean law.

Jara is the favorite to win the first round by a narrow margin, but even if she moves on to the runoff, she’s expected to face a much tougher challenge against what could be a more unified right.

“There is an electorate that doesn’t identify with either the left or the right, or with the degrees of polarization between them, but rather seeks solutions and answers, and those answers today are on the right,” said political analyst Guillermo Holzmann. “It is the most extreme right wing that is now being validated, that is not only considered sensible, but also reasonable and electable.”

Holzmann argues that Kast’s chances in this election are greater than his previous runs due to issues the Boric administration has failed to resolve, such as the growing sense of insecurity and the fight against organized crime.

“Chile enters these elections with a degree of uncertainty,” he said. “Although we’ve been expecting a presidential runoff for months, and it’s clear there will be a shift in ideological orientation in the next government.”

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