Next Sunday (19), Chileans go to the polls to choose a new president, in an electoral race that should be vote by vote. Two polls that Reuters had access to this week indicate an entirely undefined dispute, with one survey putting right-wing lawyer José Antonio Kast in the lead and another leading Broad Left Front candidate Gabriel Boric.
This Thursday (16), the agency informed that a survey carried out by the AtlasIntel consultancy indicated that Kast has 48.5% of voting intentions, while Boric has 48.4%. Another survey, by Cadem consultancy and which Reuters had access to earlier this week, showed Kast with 36% of voting intentions, just three points behind Boric.
In the first round, held on November 21, the conservative candidate got 28% of the vote and the leftist 26%. In the first election since the return to democracy in which the center-left and center-right traditional parties failed to reach the second round, the consensus is that Chileans will have to choose between the leftmost government since Salvador Allende (1970-1973) or the most to the right since Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
Boric, a 35-year-old MP and former student leader who describes himself as an environmentalist, feminist and regionalist, wants to expand the state’s role to a model of social welfare similar to that of Europe. Kast, a 55-year-old Catholic lawyer, wants to reduce the role of the state, lower taxes, tackle irregular migration and ban all forms of abortion.
The second round campaign was marked by controversy. The Associated Press published an investigation showing an identity card that showed the Nazi Party’s registration of a man named Michael Kast, the name of the conservative candidate’s father, with a matching date and place of birth.
Kast replied, in an interview with Chilean radio, that, “besides a piece of paper”, he and his entire family “hate” the Nazis. Earlier, the candidate had already acknowledged his father’s participation in the German armed forces during World War II, but claimed that he was recruited by force.
During debates, Kast needled Boric over a sexual harassment charge from his time as a student leader and drug use. In the first case, the leftist candidate said that no formal charges were filed and said he was “available for any investigation”.
In November, when the subject surfaced in the Chilean media, Boric had already admitted that during his time as a student leader he had made “unacceptable sexist comments” and apologized. Kast, who spoke of “abuse” charges at the debate, later apologized and said the charges against the opponent were harassment, but said the leftist still “needs to clarify with the victim.”
On the second issue, Boric presented a negative drug test, after insinuations from Kast due to the fact that the leftist said he was in favor of the cultivation of marijuana for his own use, which the conservative candidate opposes.
Starting on Sunday night, one of them will have the mission to pacify Chile, whose political life has been shaken since the street protests of 2019. “It is a very uncertain election in a very abnormal year. It’s been two very abnormal years and, from the social turmoil onwards, nothing is predictable,” Kenneth Bunker, director of consultancy Tresquintos, told Reuters.
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