José Antonio Kast won the second round of the presidential election in Chile on Sunday and will become the country's next president. With 58.6 percent of the vote—with 83.4 percent of the polling stations reporting—the ultraconservative candidate of the Republican Party defeated leftist Jeannette Jara (41.3 percent) in an election marked by the debate on security and immigration.

The result consolidates a shift in the Chilean political landscape to the right, in line with recent events in countries like Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador, following four years of progressive government. It also confirms a trend in Chile: for two decades, no president has managed to transfer power to a successor of the same political persuasion. Kast will assume power on March 11, 2026.

The tightening of measures against crime and the regulation of irregular migration were central to Kast's strategy to expand his voter base beyond the traditional right and defeat the left.

The core of his security proposal is the so-called Relentless Plan, which includes the total isolation of criminal leaders, the creation of maximum-security prisons, the prohibition of so-called “narco-funerals,” the expansion of police powers, and a package of measures against vandalism—ranging from legal proceedings to restrictions on access to scholarships, subsidies, and loans— and which, according to his critics, aims to contain social protest.

Supporters of José Antonio Kast at his campaign headquarters. Photo: EFE

Immigration—especially irregular immigration—is one of the country's main challenges and has been widely exploited by the right wing. It is the second biggest concern for Chileans and a central theme of the campaign, even more so considering that Chile is home to approximately 1.9 million foreigners, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), of whom almost 340,000 are undocumented, mostly Venezuelans (252,591 people).

In this area, Kast proposes a drastic shift: militarizing the borders, establishing a detention system for migrants who enter irregularly, carrying out express expulsions, and sanctioning NGOs that interfere with these processes.

His program also includes the construction of trenches and physical barriers in areas of the Atacama Desert, as well as the tightening of residency requirements and the prohibition of access to state aid for those without regular status.

“We always want to protect and safeguard the value of the family. But when there are people who have broken the law, they have to make a decision. If they don't want to take their children, we will have to take responsibility for them,” he said during the last debate on undocumented migrant parents who have children born in Chile.

With his election, concerns persist that the new government will push through cuts in social assistance and accelerate the rise in inequality, a particularly sensitive fear in a country where demands for greater social protection and redistribution were central after the social uprising of 2019. The fiscal adjustment plan announced by the president-elect focuses on cutting approximately $6 billion from state spending during the first 18 months of his term.

This is how EL TIEMPO reported it:

The Chilean Electoral Service (Servel) published the first bulletin with preliminary results. With 4.46% of the polling stations counted, the report shows a still open race, with opposition candidate Kast obtaining 59.8% of the votes, followed by Jara with 40.1%.

Sun 14.12.2025 - 16:00

Polling Stations Close

With the closing of the polls throughout the country, Chile concluded the voting day. From this moment the vote count begins, while electoral authorities call for waiting for the first official results, which could be known within the next hour.

Preliminary results of the overseas vote show that Jara is leading in most countries, although with lower numbers than those obtained by Boric in 2021. Jara won in Australia, Korea, Russia, New Zealand, and Vietnam with 64 percent of the vote.

Chilean police confirmed that the bomb threat that caused the temporary evacuation of a school in Valparaíso, which was being used as a polling place for these presidential elections, was false.

The main controversy of the morning arose when customers of Lipigas, one of the largest companies in the country, received a text message supporting Kast, who denied any connection to the incident. Jara reported the incident, while the company attributed it to hackers.

Sun 14.12.2025 - 10:40

Voting in Chile proceeds without incident

All polling stations were set up without difficulty and voter turnout began slowly from the first hour, in a presidential process that, for the first time in Chile's history, is mandatory for the electoral census.

The government candidate Jeannette Jara walked from her mother's house to the Poeta Federico García Lorca High School, in the Conchalí district (north of Santiago, Chile), where she cast her vote.

Around 10 a.m. At 10:00 a.m. local time, two hours after the polls opened, candidate José Antonio Kast cast his vote. The politician expressed confidence in his victory and promised to be the president “of all Chileans.”

Sun 14.12.2025 - 10:21 a.m.

President Boric went to the polls

One of the first to vote was President Gabriel Boric, who, from his hometown of Punta Arenas in the far south of the country, urged citizens to defend democracy and highlighted the speed and reliability of the electoral process in Chile.