Chilean conservative former lawmaker José Antonio Kast obtained a sweeping nationwide victory against communist former minister Jeannette Jara in Sunday’s presidential runoff election.
Kast, who won in every Chilean state, will take office as next president of Chile on March 11, 2026, succeeding far-left President Gabriel Boric and shifting Chile towards the right.
Sunday marked the Chilean left’s largest defeat since Chile’s return to democracy in 1990 and confirmed late-November polls that forecast a conservative presidential landslide in Chile. The runoff election saw 13.4 million voters head to the polls to choose their next president. Voting in Chilean elections is compulsory for all eligible voters under penalty of a fine.
According to official results from Chile’s Servel electoral authority, Kast, a conservative lawyer and former lawmaker, obtained a sweeping 58.16 percent of the votes against communist former minister Jara, who obtained 41.84 percent. At a regional level, Kast reportedly won in every single one of Chile’s 16 regions (states), with Jara only securing victories in 32 out of the country’s 346 municipalities.
Kast, 59, ran a campaign centered around tackling Chile’s “emergency” problems by curbing illegal migration, cracking down on growing violent crime in the country, and reinvigorating Chile’s economy.
The conservative president-elect’s now successful 2025 presidential campaign marked the third time he ran for president after past unsuccessful attempts in 2021 and 2017. In 2021, he ran against current President Boric, and although Kast won in the first round of the election, he ultimately lost. Jara announced on social media that she spoke with Kast over the phone and wished success to the new president-elect for the good of Chile. Moments later, Kast met with Jara.
Outgoing President Boric held a telephone conversation with President-elect Kast on Sunday evening in which Boric invited him to the Chilean presidential palace for a meeting on Monday to begin the presidential transition. The Chilean government published a video of both sides of the call on social media.
“And rest assured that Chile is greater than you, than me, than all of us who have come before, and that it is built on the foundation of what everyone has done before. I hope that this will also inspire you when it is your turn to take the helm. Thank you very much, José Antonio. See you tomorrow,” Boric concluded at the end of the call.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Kast in a social media post expressing that the United States looks forward to partnering with his administration to strengthen regional security and “revitalize our trade relationship.”
Local outlets reported that leftist groups protested in Santiago against the conservative candidate’s overwhelming victory on Sunday night. According to the Chilean outlet The Clinic, the protest took place before Kast had issued his victory speech and saw the group of leftists yell insults against Chile’s carabineros gendarmerie officials and attempt to stage roadblocks.
Law enforcement officials dispersed the protest by deploying a water cannon truck, with some of the protesters reportedly throwing stones against police vehicles.
In his victory speech, Kast reiterated that his “emergency” government’s three priorities will be migration, security, and the economy and reportedly stressed that he will make “difficult decisions” that will not yield immediate results. He also called for a culture of collaboration and respect, even with adversaries such as Jara.
“An emergency does not mean authoritarianism at all. An emergency means one very simple thing: priority, urgency, and compliance,” Kast said.
“We must be very firm against delinquency, organized crime, impunity, and chaos. But we must also be very magnanimous in order to rebuild coexistence, respect, and trust among our compatriots,” he added in another part of his speech.
On security, the president-elect said that, although his government would allow protests, he will not tolerate a rupture of order and will prosecute those who commit crimes. Chile went through an intense, multi-year period of far left protests in recent years that initially began as protests over cancelled public transit fare hikes and escalated to failed attempts to replace the current Chilean constitution with a far-left one.
On migration, Kast said that Chile is willing to receive migrants that follow the law, warning that those who break the law must leave the country and that “if a foreign friend who is a resident breaks the law, they have to leave.”
Kast’s Sunday victory marks the latest in a string of conservative victories across South America, with the lower half of the continent now under right-wing governments — a fact Argentine President Javier Milei pointed out through a map posted on social media with the text, “The left is retreating. Freedom is advancing,” and the acronym “VLLC,” the initials of his widely known catchphrase “Long Live Liberty, Damn It.”
Chilean outlets have described Kast’s victory as the Chilean left’s worst defeat since the return to democracy. The result follows four years of Boric’s widely panned government that saw, in addition to back-to-back attempts at rewriting the constitution, surges in migration, a noticeable increase in crime and gang violence, and a lack of economic revitalization following the 2019-2022 leftist riots and the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic despite the reported stable inflation rates experienced by the country in the past years.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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