Three takeaways from Chile's election

Chile's far right inched closer to winning power for the first time in 35 years after its leader José Antonio Kast qualified for a presidential run-off against communist ex-minister Jeannette Jara.

Here are three key takeaways from the first round of the election on Sunday, which was fought on violent crime and immigration.

Short-lived glory for the left

Jara edged past Kast in Sunday's election among eight candidates, winning 26.82 percent of votes against 23.97 percent for Kast.

But there were long faces at Jara's election night party as the votes were totted up. 

She had been aiming for at least 30 percent, equivalent to the approval ratings of outgoing centre-left President Gabriel Boric.

But she fell significantly short of the mark.

With the sum of the votes cast on the right more than doubling those on the left, Kast can expect to dramatically expand his vote in the second round.

Ultra-right MP Johannes Kaiser, who came in fourth, said he would support any right-wing candidate against the left.

Jara, by contrast, can only expect to pick up a few points on the left.

"It's worse than the worst-case scenario for the left," Rodrigo Espinoza, a political analyst at Diego Portales University, told AFP. 

Jara, 51, made overtures on Sunday night to two right-wing candidates seen as relative moderates -- third-placed economist Franco Parisi and fifth-placed former minister Evelyn Matthei.

"Almost half of Chileans didn't vote for me or Kast, and starting tomorrow, we're going to go out and talk to them and listen to them carefully," she said.

Far-right smells victory

The stars were aligned for the right in an election dominated by a surge in organised crime, which many Chileans link to a wave of migration from other Latin American countries, particularly Venezuela.

The murder rate has more than doubled in the past decade to six per 100,000. The number of kidnappings is up 76 percent in four years.

Kast and Kaiser vied for votes with radical "mano dura" ["iron fist"] proposals, including deporting all 330,000 illegal migrants and, in Kaiser's case, jailing people for such minor offences as stealing a chocolate bar.

Kast, a 59-year-old lawyer, had already campaigned heavily on crime in the last election in 2021 election, which he lost to Boric.

Rodrigo Arellano, an analyst at Chile's University for Development, said Kast's constant drum-beating on the issue gave him credibility.

Collapse of mainstream right

After decades of flipping back and forth between the centre-right and centre-left, Chileans tacked sharply to the right.

The establishment favourite, 72-year-old Evelyn Matthei, a consensus-driven conservative ex-minister and ex-mayor, trailed in fifth place.

A year ago, she was favoured to win the race but she failed to prevent a flight to the far right.

Conceding defeat, she took aim at the hardline proposals of her rivals, saying Chile required "democratic responsibility and real solutions."