Chile holds an election that could deliver its most right-wing president since dictatorship

As Chileans vote on Sunday, even detractors of ultra-conservative former lawmaker José Antonio Kast say the candidate whose radical ideas lost him the past two elections is likely to become the country’s next leader.

Kast’s commanding lead in the polls over his rival in the presidential runoff, communist Jeannette Jara, shows how the hard-liner agitating for mass deportations of immigrants has seized the mantle of the traditional right in a country that once defined its post-dictatorship democratic revival with a vow to contain such political forces.