José Antonio Kast Wins Chile Presidency

Chilean voters elected conservative candidate José Antonio Kast as their next president on Sunday, securing a decisive victory in the country's presidential runoff with 58 percent of the vote against leftist contender Jeannette Jara's 42 percent. The outcome, announced late Sunday, marks Kast's third attempt at the presidency and signals a significant rightward shift in the South American nation, the most pronounced since the end of military rule in 1990.

The election followed a first-round vote on November 16, 2025, where neither candidate surpassed 50 percent; Jara had edged Kast with 26.85 percent to his 23.93 percent, advancing both to the runoff. Kast, a father of nine with roots in conservative Catholicism and neoliberal economics, capitalized on widespread public frustration with rising insecurity and immigration pressures. His campaign emphasized restoring order amid what he described as a descent into chaos, promising to build a physical barrier along Chile's northern border with Peru and Bolivia, deport irregular migrants—many from Venezuela—and construct maximum-security prisons to house criminals.

In his victory speech Sunday night in Santiago, Kast declared, "Chile...