By Fabian Cambero and Sarah Morland
SANTIAGO (Reuters) -After falling short in two previous presidential runs, Chilean candidate Jose Antonio Kast is now favored by analysts to win the country’s presidency in a runoff next month, a sign of how his far-right anti-immigrant views have gained a wave of new support amid fears about increased crime.
Kast, 59, was just behind frontrunner leftist Jeannette Jara in Sunday’s first-round presidential election but analysts broadly expect him to pick up most of the votes from three other right-wing candidates who fell short, some of whom endorsed him or appeared beside him as the results came out.
Kast lost to leftist President Gabriel Boric in 2021, a moment many polls showed his hardline policies were out of step with the electorate rattled by the pandemic, widespread protests against inequality and hopes of drafting a new constitution. But now sentiment has shifted and his proposals are resonating with voters overwhelmingly concerned about crime and immigration.
He has vowed to close the borders to undocumented migrants, take down organized crime, and fix long waiting times at hospitals.
Jara, his main rival, has contrasted him by campaigning on her success as labor minister, pushing through popular policies, like pension reform, a reduced work week and increasing the minimum wage. She has vowed to limit migration without mass deportations and increase funding for social programs.
Kast himself is the son of a German immigrant, a Nazi party member and army lieutenant who fled to South America after World War Two, where he eventually founded a lucrative sausage business in Paine, south of Santiago.
A Catholic with nine children, Kast has been married to Maria Pia Adriasola, a lawyer who has frequently campaigned at his side, for more than three decades.
His eldest brother, Miguel Kast, was a government minister and central bank president in the early 1980s under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. One of the so-called Chicago Boys who pioneered shock therapy economics, he pushed deregulation and privatizations.
Kast, who faced criticism and media scrutiny over his family’s Nazi ties during his 2021 presidential bid, has said his father was a forced conscript.
He studied law but by the late 1990s joined the right-wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI) party. After serving as a UDI congressman for more than a decade, Kast stepped down in 2016 to pursue the presidency as an independent but ended up winning less than 10% of the vote. He gained more traction in 2021 running under the banner of his self-founded Republican Party.
Chileans now view Kast as a familiar face with over two decades of political experience, David Altman, a political scientist at Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University, said, noting that Kast benefited from growing rejection of Boric’s leftist government.
“It’s not that people became more fascist in the space of four years,” he said. “People abandoned the left and as there essentially was not a political center, they went right. It was the only place where they could land.”
Kast has taken inspiration from the U.S. for his tough-on-borders approach, and last year visited the Salvadoran mega-prisons built by President Nayib Bukele, a model his platform calls for emulating, along with a militarized border zone.
He has also praised former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, as well as U.S. President Donald Trump, pledging to build a specialized police force modeled on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tasked with tracking down undocumented migrants and rapidly deporting them.
His success would make Chile the latest Latin American country to tilt right after Bolivia’s election in August.
Kast’s economic plan involves more flexible labor laws, cuts to corporate taxes and less regulation – though he is expected to moderate spending cuts widely seen as unrealistic as he reworks his platform to incorporate those of his main right-wing rivals.
Kast has previously said he would repeal Chile’s limited abortion rights and ban sales of the morning-after pill. He has focused on other issues this election, but said he hasn’t changed his views.
“I support life from conception to natural death,” Kast said when pushed on the topic during the last televised debate.
Kast is widely expected to pick up support from his main right-wing competitors, but voters for Franco Parisi, an anti-establishment candidate who finished third in Sunday’s race with 20% of the vote, will be a key voting bloc.
Nicholas Watson, Latin America Managing Director at Teneo, said neither candidate could take Parisi’s vote for granted.
“The success of this exercise goes beyond Kast’s ability to win the runoff but speaks to the construction of a new right-leaning coalition,” he said.
An October 31 Panel Ciudadano UDD poll found that 46% of voters would vote for Kast in a runoff, compared to 32% for Jara – though more than a fifth remained undecided.
(Reporting by Fabian Cambero, Natalia Ramos, Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Sarah Morland; Editing by Christian Plumb)
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