Chile's far-right Kast leads in first round of presidential election as runoff looms

Chile is headed for a polarized presidential election runoff next month as hard-right former congressman José Antonio Kast held the lead in the first-round vote on Sunday ahead of leftist lawmaker and former protest leader Gabriel Boric.

With 80.54% of the vote counted, Kast, 55, had 28.15% versus 25.32% for Boric, 35 - although both were well short of the majority needed to win outright.

More moderate, center-right candidates performed well, a potential boost for Kast in the Dec. 19 runoff.

In a surprise, economist Franco Parisi, who is living in Alabama and did not set foot in Chile during the campaign, was in third place with over 13% of the vote.

Center-right candidate Sebastián Sichel and center-left Yasna Provoste were just behind, both with around 12%.

At: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chileans-head-polls-with-two-radically-different-visions-ballot-2021-11-21/

Social Convergence (left-wing) nominee Gabriel Boric and Republican (far-right) nominee José Kast during a recent presidential debate in Santiago, Chile.

The election, Chile's most divisive since its 1990 return to democracy, has split voters between those seeking a shake-up of the country's free-market model and those demanding a harder line against crime and immigration.

Boric led student protests in 2011 demanding improvements to Chile's education system, and has pledged to scrap the nation's laissez-faire economic model.

Kast, who belongs to the hard-right Catholic sect Opus Dei, has praised the neo-liberal "economic legacy" of former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

He has drawn frequent comparisons with former U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.