Who will win the Chilean presidential election?

By: Ricardo Israel - 17/11/2025

Katz or Matthei? This Sunday, December 16th, there are presidential, congressional, and partially senatorial elections, but all indications are that we won't know the winner yet and will have to wait for the second round, which will take place on Sunday, December 14th. In the final stretch, there's a ban on publishing polls, but according to all the preliminary ones, as well as other recent privately circulated polls, the second round would be between José Antonio Katz and the left-wing candidate and communist activist, Jeannette Jara.

As is public knowledge, throughout the world the predictive capacity of political polls is being criticized and scrutinized for having erred increasingly and noticeably, and without going any further, they were wrong in predicting the resounding victories of Milei and Paz, in the first round in the case of the current Bolivian president.

There are no technical reasons to doubt the Chilean case, but it is worth noting that this presidential election has three striking characteristics: first, the failure of Boric, whose administration has undermined the possibility that his successor will be someone from his party ranks, due to the crises that Chile is currently experiencing in various areas and sectors.

Second, it is unusual that the issues surrounding this election are all associated with the right wing, something that hasn't happened in Chile for a long time. Since the presidential elections of 1920, even when the right wing triumphed, issues associated with the center and left, primarily of a social nature, have always predominated. This time, the right wing has entered the contest divided into three lists, with marked differences between them and three candidates of Chilean-German origin: a) the traditional right wing with a center-right candidacy, as is the case today with Evelyn Matthei, who is running for the second time; b) a self-proclaimed libertarian candidacy of Johannes Kaiser, heavily influenced by Milei; and c) Kast, who is running after winning the first round in 2021 but losing the final round to Boric, and who, like Kaiser, proudly embraces the legacy of General Pinochet.

Third, Sunday's election will be crucial for the migrant vote, since in Chile, migrants are added to the electoral register after five years of residency. In fact, their presence was already felt in the constitutional referendums as well as in last year's municipal elections, where they proved decisive in densely populated areas, including downtown Santiago.

This is due to Chile's economic progress, and on the Ex Ante website, analyst Pepe Auth reported that while the 1992 census showed that 0.8% of the population was born outside of Chile, statistics indicated that by 2024 this figure had reached 8.8%. Out of a population of around 20 million, 1,608,650 inhabitants had been born outside the country in that latter year, and this 8.8% was double the figure for 2017. Moreover, the composition of this population had changed significantly, since in 2017 Peruvians were the largest group, while in 2014, 41.6% were born in Venezuela, 14.5% in Peru, and 12.3% in Colombia.

Beyond the negative impact of uncontrolled immigration, especially on the northern border, this migration has had a positive impact, particularly in two areas: combating the sharp decline in the birth rate, one of the worst in the world, and addressing the pronounced aging of the population. Venezuela is currently the South American country with the highest proportion of immigrants and also the lowest birth rate. It is worth noting that these immigrants will be a growing factor influencing elections. While only 72,000 immigrants voted in the 2021 presidential election, of the 15,779,102 registered voters eligible to vote in November and December 2025, 5.6%, or 885,940, are foreign nationals. Auth explains that if the same voter turnout as in the 2022 plebiscite were to occur, approximately 540,000 immigrants should vote in 2025, of whom roughly 160,000 should be Venezuelan.

Eight candidates are competing in this presidential election, but whoever from the right makes it to the second round clearly has the best chance of becoming president. Therefore, which right-wing faction ultimately triumphs will be largely determined by the paradigm that has shaped Chilean elections since the 1988 plebiscite, called to decide on the continuation of General Pinochet's rule. On that occasion, the "No" vote that defeated him has since determined winners and losers in every subsequent election, including the most recent one in which Boric defeated Kast.

However, something very important began to emerge in the 2022 referendum that overwhelmingly defeated the proposed new constitution, which sought to refound the country in a revolutionary manner. This was the first time the vote wasn't framed as a simple Yes or No, right or left, with the military dictatorship always as a point of reference. Instead, the vote was cast more in terms of the future than the past.

In a country where the political center has been losing influence, as in many other countries, in practical terms, if the old paradigm of Yes and No is maintained, Matthei could have an opportunity if, given the terminal crisis of the Concertación, there were a transfer of centrist voters to her candidacy. In that sense, there has been public support originating from that sector. However, if what predominates is the image of a country in multisectoral crisis and with profound disillusionment over unfulfilled promises, it would be Kast who would confirm in the second round what the polls indicate and would move to La Moneda in March 2026, after the respective swearing-in.

This has been an election campaign where the right wing always had the first opportunity, since it helps a lot to win when their own issues predominate in the public debate, such as violence, crime and illegal immigration, coupled with disastrous management and an economic decline in practically every relevant indicator.

What has shifted is which of the three candidates is considered the frontrunner, as the right wing has been more concerned with discrediting its alternatives than with forging unity in this virtually unprecedented situation. For a long time, it seemed that fortune would favor Evelyn Matthei, supported as she was by the most powerful and traditional parties in the sector. However, all indications are that something similar happened to Hillary Clinton, both in the Democratic primary against Obama and in the election against Trump, in that her supporters prematurely declared her the winner, viewing it more as a coronation than an electoral contest. Such was the confidence placed in Matthei, with her distinguished decades-long career as a congresswoman, senator, minister, and mayor.

This is how Kast and his Republican party were able to catch up and then surpass her in the polls. More than the economy, the average voter was motivated by issues of violence and crime, and Kast's more radical solutions resonated better with many voters who don't usually vote when it's voluntary. However, in this instance, as in constitutional referendums, voting is mandatory, with a significant fine for those who don't cast their ballots. If the polls are correct and Kast advances to the second round and becomes president, it will demonstrate that old electoral truth in democracies: in the race for votes, the candidate who is overtaken, like in horse racing, wins. It's the application to elections of the principle that "a horse overtaken is a horse won," which isn't even new, as it was spoken of, at least in Chile, by someone who competed in many elections, like Salvador Allende.

Special mention in this campaign goes to Keiser, who built a growing political alternative through social media, drawing votes away from other right-wing candidates, and to the communist candidate Jeannette Jara, who overcame several obstacles. First, she defeated a stronger candidate in the primaries: Carolina Tohá, Boric's Minister of the Interior and a long-time member of the Socialist Party. Tohá, like Matthei, had taken for granted something that wasn't certain. Second, she was able to overcome the limitations of a party like the Communist Party, which remains essentially a Leninist party and continues to support the dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela. Jara managed to distance herself from these limitations and, third, stem the flow of voters from that sector due to Boric's poor governance, becoming a competitive candidate in the first round and leading in the polls for months.

In any case, this should be the extent of their chances, since the runoff system makes it almost impossible for them to grow beyond the one-third that the left has historically represented in Chile. However, this allows that sector to maintain a presence in Congress that it would not otherwise have achieved, adding to a right wing that is competing divided and, even if it manages to unite in the second round, may have missed a great opportunity to sweep aside its rivals.

The existence of the second round has been present since the return to democracy, and was even established earlier, during the discussion of the 1980 Constitution, as it was presented as a lesson learned from the election of Allende in 1970, arguing that if this so-called "French solution" (referring to the constitution of Charles De Gaulle) had existed, Allende would not have taken office, as his rivals would have united to defeat him. Above all, Jara may have helped Boric's political future, since if he leaves power with a candidate who maintains between a quarter and a third of the electorate, for someone who retires in a state of crisis and failure, but who, upon handing over the government next year at the age of 40, will almost certainly be able to run again, and, in fact, he stopped governing in the present months ago to concentrate on his political future, and has sought a kind of pink leftism instead of red, by inviting Sánchez, Lula, Orsi and Petro to build an alternative, in addition to speaking out without restraint against Trump and continuing to strengthen his antisemitic credentials along the same lines, since everything indicates that he wants to take the place that someone he admires like Lula will leave vacant due to age in the not too distant future, whether he wins or loses his reelection.

Chile has experienced a veritable electoral lottery in recent years, with each election producing different results, one after the other. Thus, it wasted four years between 2019 and 2023 on two constitutional processes, with an initial plebiscite, two referendums, two rejections, and in the end, the country returned to square one. All of this was precipitated by the violence of October 2019, based on two lies that, when believed by the masses, paved the way for Boric's rise to power. First, that in the successful 30 years following the return to democracy, a "perverse" elite had done nothing to benefit the people. And second, that the "Pinochet constitution" should be buried, when in reality it had undergone so many modifications that it was President Lagos's constitution, bearing his signature.

During those years, the country went from trying to change everything to wanting to change nothing, a constitutional delusion from which Chile was saved by the vote of its citizens, who taught the political class that in a democracy, no one owns the vote. This is what we recount in a book published last year entitled “Chile and Its 360-Degree Turn” (Interamerican Institute for Democracy Press, USA, 2024, 264pp), a title that refers to the fact that, in the end, the country returned to square one.

Has Chile improved, is it cured of this experience? I would like to say yes, but I don't think so, since I don't even think it has completely overcome the October uprising and the violence that did so much damage to the country, and that endangered the democratic system itself.

Moreover, the very political sector that governed under Boric during these years and was behind this process has already sown a poisoned apple. One need only look at the budget still under discussion for next year, as it is clear that some social programs have been deliberately defunded to ensure social unrest as soon as the new government takes office. The October Revolution is struggling to survive, but it is not dead. Furthermore, the political center has practically disappeared, and the right wing has not been able to unite under the best conditions it has had in many years.

There are decisions the new government will be able to make easily as soon as it takes office in March 2026, decisions that align with the new political context emerging in Latin America. One need only look at the political changes in Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, and, with some likelihood, Venezuela and Colombia. This includes restoring severely damaged relations with countries like the US and Israel, but this is insufficient for the task ahead for Chile, which is to recover its momentum toward modernization and upward social mobility.

In the case of the US, perhaps the new government will do what Boric refused to do, which is to offer the US a long-term agreement on what Washington wants above all else: rare earth elements. The fundamental issue is that winning an election, regardless of who wins in the opposition, is not enough. What Chile needs is to recover what it has lost: the democracy of agreements, to seek consensus for a better country, one that can progress in social peace.

I believe Chile needs to learn from the experience of the Concertación, which failed to renew itself after its success and ultimately disappeared. What Chile needs is to propose a grand pact to achieve what no other country in the region has accomplished, nor is it currently being proposed: a grand agreement with two objectives, and no more than two: economic development and politically, a high-quality democracy, thus focusing on one goal and two objectives.

It's not that Chile hadn't tried in the past. If one examines the 20th century, from the implementation of the 1925 Constitution onward, Chile had, between 1932 and 1973, one after the other, different types of government. It had Arturo Alessandri during a civilian restoration after the dictatorship of General Ibáñez; then, between 1939 and 1952, there were three middle-class governments, one of only three Popular Front experiences in the world, the other two ending in disaster: Spain in its civil war and France in its humiliating defeat to Germany. Subsequently, in 1952, General Ibáñez returned to power in a rare Chilean-style populist experiment, but this time he exercised power in an impeccably democratic manner, to be replaced by the only one we could consider right-wing in this period, Jorge Alessandri, who in turn was followed by the “revolution in liberty” of Eduardo Frei Montalva, who in turn handed the presidential sash to Salvador Allende, who in 1973 was overthrown, without Chile still being able to fully overcome the human rights violations that took place in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Chile had a successful transition to democracy, but it lost its way. Hopefully, it will learn to make up for lost time, but it will take more than just management to overcome the setbacks it has experienced. It is not enough to govern slightly better than those who have had neither demonstrable successes nor political continuity.

The country is exhausted from experiments; there's stagnation, and a new narrative is needed—something people feel is worth sacrificing for. First and foremost, we shouldn't delude ourselves with second-round victories, as evidence shows that in the second round, borrowed votes appear, votes given as the lesser of two evils. In many cases, people vote against someone they don't want, instead of voting willingly for the one who receives them. In practice, there's self-deception at play, because alongside victory comes fragility, which is yet another reason why a new narrative must be sought—one that motivates, not just coerces.

@israelzipper

-Master's and PhD in Political Science (University of Essex), Bachelor of Laws (University of Barcelona), Lawyer (University of Chile), former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013)

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».