Chilean communist scores surprise win in primary vote as battle with far-right looms

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) – Chilean Communist Jeannette Jara, the country’s former labor minister, won the primary election for left-wing parties Sunday with surprising ease, beating out a more moderate rival to clinch over 60% of the vote.

The decisive upset makes Jara, 51, the candidate representing Chile’s beleaguered incumbent government in November elections, set to face off against center-right and far-right contenders who have surged in the polls.

Because of term limits, the current leftist president, Gabriel Boric, 39, cannot run for a second consecutive term.

Jara, a lawyer and member of Chile’s Communist Party who was Boric’s labor minister before resigning to run for president, secured 60.5% of the vote. The runner-up who had been considered a favorite – former Interior Minister Carolina Toha from the traditional Democratic Socialist party – took 27.7%.

“Today begins a new path that we will walk together, with the conviction to build a fairer and more democratic Chile,” Jara wrote on social media. “In the face of the threat from the far-right, we respond with unity, dialogue and hope.”

After Boric’s 2022 election, voting was made compulsory, adding unpredictability to this year’s race.

Preliminary turnout figures from electoral authorities showed that turnout was much lower than expected, with just 1.4 million people casting ballots. Chile has some 15.4 million eligible voters.

Although Jara’s landslide win represents the rise of hard-liners within Boric’s coalition, analysts have described Jara as less dogmatic and more diplomatic than some of her Communist peers. As labor minister, she earned praise for a program that increased minimum wage and reduced the working week to 40 hours.

She has earned comparisons to Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s former center-left president and an icon of female empowerment who governed 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018.

Paying tribute to Bachelet in her victory speech, she said: “She was the one who showed us the path that nothing is impossible.”

But Jara faces a tough climb to the top job. Recent opinion polls show the left-wing government declining in popularity at a moment of sluggish economic growth and rising fears over organized crime and migration in what has long been regarded as one of the region’s most stable and prosperous democracies.

Those hot-button issues have helped mobilize support for Chile’s right-wing candidates, particularly ultraconservative lawyer and former lawmaker Jose Antonio Kast, and set the stage for a deeply polarized election.

Another favorite on the right is Evelyn Matthei, a former minister of labor whose business friendly policy proposals have charmed investors.

Chileans will go to the polls Nov. 16 to elect a president for the 2026-2030 term.