Chile votes in presidential elections

15/12/2025 7:17

Chileans are voting in a runoff presidential election that is expected to result in the South American country's sharpest rightward shift since the end of the military dictatorship in 1990.



Nearly 15.6 million registered voters in Chile are set to cast ballots.



Polls will close at 6 p.m. local time, pending voter lines, with initial results expected soon after.



The runoff pits Jose Antonio Kast, from the far-right Republican Party that he founded, against Jeannette Jara, the incumbent leftist government's coalition candidate from the Communist Party.



While Jara won November's first round with 26.85% of the vote, Kast beat out an array of right-wing candidates to finish second with 23.92%.



Most of the voters who supported those candidates are projected to go for Kast, which would give him more than 50% of the vote and the presidency.



As the campaigns wound down, both candidates threw jabs at each other, but also focused on the main topic that has come to define the election: crime.



Speaking on Thursday from behind a clear protective barrier in the southern city of Temuco, the capital of a region rattled by conflict between Indigenous Mapuche groups and the government, Kast described a country in chaos and said he would restore order.