Chile heads into its most consequential presidential election in decades

The presidential election in Chile this Sunday is no ordinary contest.

The country is undergoing its biggest transformation since Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, with constitutional reform underway after years of massive street protests. And the favorites to replace center-right billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera at the La Moneda Palace are not exactly products of the country’s political establishment.

“The polls show a far-right candidate like José Antonio Kast and a leftist like Gabriel Boric making it to the second round,” pollster and political analyst Axel Callis from the Tú Influyes consultancy tells The Brazilian Report. “We haven’t seen candidates like these making a runoff in 30 years, so it is a very uncommon situation. Many young people are hopeful of seeing change, but this coexists with a feeling of uncertainty among the older generation who are fearful about what they might lose in the process, and are looking for a more conservative alternative.”

Since the return to democracy in 1990, Chile has had mostly centrist, social-democratic — yet still very business-friendly — governments, led by the Concertación coalition composed of the Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party – as well as a couple of center-right Piñera administrations.

The Concertación coalition left many of the economic pillars of the dictatorship years untouched, ranging from its private pension system to its education policies, with fiscal discipline, low trade barriers, financialization, and high personal indebtedness levels in train. And though Socialist President Michele Bachelet tried to veer left during her last term in charge between 2014 and 2018, the return of Piñera...