Chile’s new president is an arch-conservative and ardent supporter of the Pinochet dictatorship

Chileans have elected the most right-wing presidential candidate since the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship over three and a half decades ago.

In a runoff held on December 14, 2025, José Antonio Kast, a Republican Party ex-congressman and two-time former presidential candidate, won just over 58% of the vote, while his opponent, Jeannette Jara, the left-wing labor minister of current President Gabriel Boric, won nearly 42%.

Approximately 15.6 million Chileans were eligible to vote in the first presidential election to take place with mandatory voting and automatic voter registration.

As a result of those new election rules, which went into place in 2022, an estimated 5 million to 6 million new voters went to the polls. These voters – found to be largely younger, male and lower-middle class – are seen as lacking a strong ideological identity and rejecting politics altogether.

The verdict delivered by Chile’s voters puts it in line with a broader right-wing regional shift – most recently in Bolivia – that has reversed the “pink tide” of left-leaning governments in the past two decades. But as a historian of modern Latin America and Chile, I believe Chile’s election also reflects the important local context of years of increasing disenchantment with the political system.

Amid Chile’s expanded electorate, the primary issues of voter concern during this campaign were crime and immigration....

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