On Dec. 14, 2025, José Antonio Kast won Chile's presidential runoff with 58.2% of the vote, defeating center-left candidate Jeannette Jara and setting the stage for the country's most right-wing government in 35 years of democracy.
Kast's victory was built on a hard line against crime, illegal immigration and economic drift. He campaigned on promises to crack down on rising insecurity, deport hundreds of thousands of migrants without legal status and revive a sluggish economy that many Chileans see as underperforming despite the country's relative stability. His supporters responded to the result with cheers and horn honking in the streets, while the challenger, Jara, conceded and urged her backers not to be discouraged by defeat.
The result marks a major political shift. Chile has alternated mostly between centrist blocs since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, but Kast's win gives the country its first radical right-wing president since then. The contrast with Jara was stark: she is a lifelong Communist Party member and former labor minister in Gabriel Boric's government, while Kast is a devout Catholic, father of nine and one of the most socially conservative figures in Chilean politics.
The international reaction was immediate. Argentine President Javier Milei, who has aligned himself with Donald Trump, congratulated Kast and celebrated the wider regional shift to the right. The Trump administration also praised the result, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying Chile would advance shared priorities such as public security, ending illegal immigration and reviving trade ties under Kast's leadership.
Kast's election says as much about voter frustration as it does about his ideology. During Boric's tenure, fears about organized crime and uncontrolled migration grew powerful enough to dominate the campaign. Kast promised to take inspiration from El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, to build more maximum-security prisons and to implement harsher measures in detention centers. Supporters see that as overdue toughness; critics see a dangerous turn toward authoritarian models.
The ideological profile is also likely to matter internationally. Kast has opposed same-sex marriage and abortion without exception, and his family background has long made him a polarizing figure. But in this election, security concerns outweighed older reservations for enough voters to hand him a decisive margin. That is what makes the result more than a partisan win: it is a signal that the political center of gravity in Chile has moved.
For Boric's rivals and supporters alike, the message from the runoff is clear. Chileans voted for order first, and Kast now has a broad mandate to try to deliver it.
