Chile’s presidential election is heading to a run-off in December, in a showdown between leftist former Labour Minister Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast.

With about 83 percent of ballots counted on Sunday, Jara led with 26.71 percent, followed by Kast on 24.12 percent, according to the electoral authority, Servel.

President Gabriel Boric, in a statement from the presidential office in Santiago, recognised Jara and Kast as the front-runners headed to the second round on December 14. He also congratulated both candidates, calling it a “spectacular day of democracy”.

Eight candidates appeared on Sunday’s ballot, but would have needed to get 50 percent plus one vote to win the election outright.

Despite leading in the first round, Jara, 51, faces an uphill battle in which her rivals are throwing support around Kast, founder of the far-right Republican Party.

Sunday’s election was dominated by growing public anxiety over surging murders, kidnappings and extortion in what has long been one of Latin America’s safest countries.

Jara, a minister under Boric, has promised to hire more police, lift banking secrecy to tackle organised crime and tackle cost-of-living issues.

Kast, 59, has pledged to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to keep out migrants and asylum seekers from poorer countries to the north, such as Venezuela.

Conservative candidates back Kast

Speaking from Santiago after Boric’s statement, Jara thanked supporters and urged Chileans not to let fears over rising crime drive them into the arms of the far right in the run-off.

“Don’t let fear harden your hearts,” the politician said, insisting that the answer to crime was not to “come up with ideas, each more radical than the next” and hide behind bulletproof glass.

The comments were a dig at Kast’s draconian campaign security measures.

For his part, Kast, in his address to supporters, called for unity and promised to “rebuild” Chile after four years of centre-left rule, which he termed “maybe the worst government in Chile’s democratic history”.

Maverick economist Franco Parisi caused surprise by finishing third on 19.42 percent, ahead of ultra-right lawmaker Johannes Kaiser on 13.93 percent, and former conservative mayor Evelyn Matthei on 12.70 percent.

Parisi refrained from backing either Jara or Kast in the run-off, saying that they both needed to go look for new voters “on the street”.

The next-closest contender, Kaiser, conceded defeat and announced his endorsement of Kast, while Matthei, another conservative who won about 13 percent of votes, quickly followed suit, citing the “absolutely uncontrolled arrival” of migrants and claiming Chile needed a “sharp change of direction”.

Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman, reporting from Santiago, said supporters at Kast’s headquarters were euphoric.

“There seems to be confidence that even though he came in second place by a slim margin, he will be the first to cross the finish line in the run-off next month. These people say that it is time for a deep change in this country,” Newman said. “They say the main problems are crime, delinquency, a slow and stagnant economy and also just the fact that there has been the same people governing this country for too long, and say that it’s time for a major overhaul.”

Law-and-order issues

The dominance of law-and-order issues in Sunday’s election has marked a drastic change from the wave of left-wing optimism and hopes of drafting a new constitution that brought Gabriel Boric, who isn’t allowed to run for re-election, to power.

The rising crime has been widely attributed to foreign criminal groups, coinciding with a doubling of Chile’s migrant population since 2017. Migrants now make up 8.8 percent of the country’s residents.

Wall-to-wall news coverage of crime has led to a clamour among voters for a “mano dura” or iron fist.

Rodrigo Arellano, an analyst at Chile’s University for Development, called the results “very bad news” for Jara and said it seemed “unlikely” she could win the December 14 run-off.

“Not only is her vote count low, but the combined total of the opposition candidates is almost more than double hers,” he told the AFP news agency, blaming anti-incumbent and anticommunist sentiment.

Jara’s candidacy is considered historic in contemporary Chilean politics, in part because of her working-class background and in part because she represents the Communist Party, which has not seen such broad support since Chile’s return to democracy.

Jara, who led an effort to reduce the work week from 45 hours to 40, has campaigned on affordability, pledging to increase Chile’s minimum wage and make housing more affordable. She has also made efforts to distance herself from Boric’s administration, even hinting at a possible break from her Communist Party if elected president.

Kast, frequently compared to United States President Donald Trump, founded Chile’s Republican Party in 2019 and is widely credited for bringing extreme right positions to the national stage. He lost to Boric in the 2021 presidential election.

He has repeatedly denied reports that his father was a supporter of the Nazi party, describing him instead as a forced conscript in the German army.

Voter turnout on Sunday was significantly higher than in the previous 2021 presidential election, as voting was mandatory for all 15.7 million registered voters.

Chileans also voted for members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate on the same day.

The governing leftist coalition currently has a minority in both chambers, and right-wing majorities in both could set the stage for Congress and the presidency to be controlled by the right for the first time since the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in 1990.

The election is being closely watched as a gauge of the broader fortunes of South America’s left, which has recently suffered setbacks in countries like Argentina and Bolivia.

Last month, a centre-right president was elected in neighbouring Bolivia after 20 years of socialist rule. Right-wing candidates look likely to win presidential elections in Colombia and Peru next year, while the left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is predicted to face a close battle to retain his office in Brazil despite ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s sentencing for leading a failed coup.