The left faces immense challenges in the second round of Chile’s presidential election, argues Juan Andrés Mena.

Chile heads to a presidential election runoff on December 14th after no candidate achieved an absolute majority in the first round. This election is not simply another contest between left and right: it is the latest chapter in a 35-year struggle over the meaning of democracy, the legacy of the dictatorship, and the unresolved crisis of Chile’s neoliberal model.

The two candidates who advanced to the next round – Jeannette Jara and José Antonio Kast – represent opposing historical projects. Jara, who obtained 26.8% of the vote, is a lawyer, public administrator, and former Minister of Labour. A moderate member of the Communist Party and winner of her coalition’s primary, she embodies the democratic, institutional path of reform.

Kast, with 23.9%, represents the consolidation of far-right authoritarian populism. His biography is inseparable from Chile’s authoritarian past: son of a Nazi who fled after the war, brother and apprentice of Pinochet’s closets collaborators, supporter of Pinochet in the 1988 referendum, and political heir of the most conservative faction of the dictatorship’s legacy. His third presidential attempt comes after aligning himself closely with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

Behind them, Franco Parisi, a pragmatic, non-ideological outsider, came in third with 19.7%. He was followed by Johannes Kaiser, a disruptive far-right YouTuber with 13.9%, and Evelyn Matthei, daughter of a former member of the military junta and the candidate of the traditional right, with 12.5%.  The rest of the candidates barely reached 3% of the votes. Taken together, these results make Kast the clear favourite to become Chile’s next president.

Although these dynamics echo global trends, Chile’s election cannot be understood without situating it within three interconnected historical phases, each with specific political conditions, actors, and grievances that directly shape the 2025 landscape: two decades of neoliberal ‘peace,’ one decade of challenges, and five years of anomie.

Two Decades of Neoliberal ‘Peace’ (1990–2010)

After the coup that ended Salvador Allende’s government, Chile lived 17 years under Pinochet, during which a radical neoliberal experiment was imposed. Guided by the Chicago Boys, the dictatorship transformed the State, privatized social services, and reconfigured politics under a constitution engineered by Jaime Guzmán to preserve this model well beyond the regime’s end.

This is the country that returned to democracy in 1990: an unequal, market-driven society with weak public institutions and an electoral system designed to neutralize change. For 20 years, the Concertación (coalition of parties) governed this inherited model with relative continuity. Despite important democratic advances and reductions in extreme poverty, the coalition did not fundamentally challenge the structure of the dictatorship’s reforms. The electoral system ensured that only two blocs – the centre-left and the right – had representation, generating near-perfect legislative deadlock and making structural reform nearly impossible.

Throughout these two decades, Chile experienced what international observers called the “Chilean Miracle” – an image sustained by a commodities boom and strict macroeconomic discipline. Yet beneath the surface, a fragile society was taking shape. Middle-class families, lacking robust social protections, went heavily into debt to finance education, health care, and pensions – goods provided by a private market that offered no guarantee of quality or security. The first generations retiring under the privatized pension system discovered their savings were insufficient to ensure a dignified old age. A precarious workforce, often trained in low-quality for-profit universities, struggled to find stable employment.

Although these grievances were growing, they did not translate into major political mobilization. Guzmán’s institutional architecture had effectively contained conflict and restricted political imagination.

This period laid the structural foundations of today’s crisis. The unresolved inequalities, social precarity, and weak public services, along with the citizens’ perception of the inefficacy of the political system to solve any of these issues, created fertile ground for both anti-elite outsiders like Parisi and authoritarian ‘law-and-order’ narratives like Kast’s to grow which contributed to the collapse of traditional parties in 2025.

A Decade of Challenges (2010–2019)

The first right-wing government since the return to democracy took office in 2010 under Sebastián Piñera. Within a year, the country erupted. The 2011 student movement – demanding free, high-quality public education – became the largest and most influential social mobilization since the dictatorship. It marked the beginning of a broader cycle of protest that included movements against the privatized pension system, powerful feminist mobilizations, and regionally rooted environmental struggles.

These mobilizations fundamentally changed the political landscape. A new generation of leaders emerged from the streets, including the future president Gabriel Boric, who won a seat in the lower chamber in 2013. Their critique was not simply about specific policies: it was an indictment of the entire post-authoritarian model and the Concertación’s stewardship of it.

Michelle Bachelet’s return to the presidency in 2014 with an absolute majority in Congress seemed to offer a moment of transformative potential. Yet her coalition lacked cohesion, internal conflicts stalled major reforms, and by 2018 the right returned to power with Piñera’s second government.

By then, frustration had reached a breaking point. In 2019, a combination of fare increases, rising living costs and insensitive remarks by authorities ignited nationwide protests of unprecedented scale. Millions took to the streets, demanding dignity and structural change. Piñera declared Chile “at war,” deployed the military – something unseen since the dictatorship – and imposed curfews, further inflaming tensions.

The uprising culminated in the November 2019 cross-party agreement to initiate a constitutional reform process, an outcome previously unimaginable. The decade closed with the political system under profound question, the legitimacy of the post-1990 model shattered, and the party system destabilized.

The decade of challenges produced the new political actors competing today, shaped the left that governs under Boric, and fuelled the polarization that Kast mobilizes. The mistrust toward traditional institutions born in this period is a direct driver of both the rise of the far right and the success of anti-system candidates like Parisi in 2021 and 2025.

Five Years of Anomie (2020–2025)

The years following the uprising were the most turbulent in recent Chilean history. The pandemic exposed the fragility of the privatized welfare system. The first constitutional reform  process, despite its democratic spirit, produced a draft heavily criticized for overreach and was rejected by a large majority in a campaign marked by disinformation. A second process, dominated by Kast’s party, ended with another rejection. These failures produced deep exhaustion and disillusionment across the political spectrum.

Gabriel Boric’s 2021 victory – achieved with the highest turnout since 1990 – was largely the result of massive democratic mobilization against Kast, rather than a direct support for Boric. Thus, once in office, Boric confronted a fragmented Congress and required an alliance with the same former Concertación he had once harshly criticized. This forced pragmatic compromises that disappointed parts of his base and reinforced a sense that democratic institutions were incapable of solving people’s problems.

Politically, the right underwent a dramatic transformation. The death of former President Piñera in a helicopter accident symbolized the end of the ‘democratic right’. Similar to the 2021 election, in the 2025 first round, Kast and Kaiser decisively outperformed Evelyn Matthei, signalling the definitive collapse of the traditional right and the rise of a new authoritarian populist bloc.

A decisive turning point was the introduction of compulsory voting, which brought nearly 13.5 million Chileans – 52.5% more than the previous election – to the polls. Many of these new voters were politically distant, economically insecure, and distrustful of institutions. They became the main reservoir of support for Franco Parisi, who ran once again as an outsider, and for Kast, whose fundamentalist conservatism and authoritarian discourse resonated with demands for order and restoration amid chaos.

This period directly shaped the conditions of the first round: a vastly expanded electorate, a challenged new left and weakened traditional one, a discredited, almost non-existent centre, and a far right that has successfully redefined itself as the champion of order and stability to the detriment of the traditional right.

November 16th: A New Political Map

The first round of the 2025 election produced unprecedented outcomes. With the highest participation in Chile’s history under democracy, voters delivered several clear messages.

First, the traditional right collapsed, replaced by a consolidated authoritarian-populist right led by Kast. Matthei, considered Piñera’s political heir, was decisively overtaken by Kast and Kaiser, confirming that the historic centre-right no longer has a social or ideological base.

Second, Franco Parisi, running on a platform mixing anti-communism, anti-Pinochetism, and anti-elite resentment, captured a significant portion of the newly incorporated electorate. He even surpassed the left in regions historically associated with left-wing voting patterns.

These results reveal a new cleavage replacing the old democracy-versus-dictatorship divide that dominated Chilean politics for decades. Today, the electorate is split between an authoritarian-populist right offering order, identity politics, and punitive solutions; a large, volatile anti-elite, ideologically diffuse segment worried about insecurity and the cost of living; and a democratic left struggling to reconnect with disillusioned citizens.

The runoff between Jara and Kast is thus not about typical left-right competition. It is the crystallization of the long-term contradictions of Chile’s post-authoritarian trajectory. Kast represents the reaction to three decades of unresolved social tensions, institutional fragility, and disillusionment with democratic governance. Jara embodies the attempt to salvage democracy by addressing these grievances without renouncing pluralism.

The 2025 election is the culmination of 35 years of accumulated tensions. The neoliberal ‘peace’ created the inequalities, frustrations, and institutional constraints that later exploded. The decade of challenges delegitimized the post-1990 order and birthed new political actors. Yet it was unable to produce a new order capable of replace the existing one, satisfying the historically postponed social needs. The years of anomie fractured institutions, exhausted citizens and opened the door to authoritarian populism.

If the left wishes not only to win but to survive, it must defend democracy while confronting the demands of those who have lost faith in both the political system and in democracy as a tool for solving their daily problems. The challenge is immense, but so are the stakes: the future of Chile’s democratic path itself.

Juan Andrés Mena is a lawyer, MA in Public Policy, and researcher at Nodo XXI.

Image:Jeannette Jara, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Live_Especial_Mujeres_Comit%C3%A9_Pol%C3%ADtico,_Ministra_Jannette_Jara_%28crop2%29.jpg. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/secretaria_general_de_gobierno/52354955101/. Author: Vocería de Gobierno, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.