A landslide victory; complex challenges

Column by Carla Alberti and Diego Diaz in La Tercera, December 15, 2025

José Antonio Kast’s sweeping victory not only implies a change of power, but also confirms the decline of the dictatorship as the organizing axis of Chilean politics. This presidential election is the second in which the winning party is different from the traditional ones, and Kast is the first elected President who openly supported the “Yes” option in the 1988 plebiscite. The weakening of this structuring axis and the adoption of compulsory voting consolidate a less institutionalized and more volatile scenario, which poses significant challenges for governability and the success of the new government.

First, the government should not interpret the broad electoral support it received as an ideological mandate, as happened to President Boric’s government, but rather as the expression of the urgent concerns of a pragmatic electorate. The immediate challenge, then, is to maintain the campaign’s logic in the exercise of government and to avoid, however limited, identity-based initiatives that could reignite divisions associated with the dictatorship.

Second, the long-term difficulty for the government will be to consolidate the potential end of the post-dictatorship political cycle and open a new one. This requires articulating a project that incorporates both the center-right and the political center. The diversity within the different right-wing factions poses a significant challenge. The fundamental question is whether these right-wing groups will unite only to address specific agendas or whether they will find an ideological minimum to reconfigure the political debate. Likewise, although the political center is currently very weak electorally, it continues to play a relevant symbolic role in building a narrative with a sense of cross-cutting unity.

Finally, amid these short- and long-term tasks, the central challenge for the new government will be to meet the expectations it has generated. Security, migration, and growth are the central issues that explain Kast’s resounding victory and will, at the same time, be the fundamental yardstick by which the electorate will judge his performance. These are extremely complex policy areas. This complexity becomes especially significant in the context of a weakened party system with a less politicized electorate, which leaves governments without a political buffer against management problems and can cause them to lose support quickly. Consequently, the key will be to show visible results or, at the very least, to convince the electorate that determined action is being taken on these issues.

The new government’s political standing will depend on not deepening past ruptures while, at the same time, showing results in the present. All of this without the symbolic and party-based anchors that traditionally contributed to stability in the Chilean political system. In an increasingly volatile political landscape, responding to concrete problems has become the main source of legitimacy.

By Carla Alberti, academic at the Institute of Political Science UC and researcher at the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD), and Diego Díaz R., School of Government UC.

Published in: https://www.latercera.com/opinion/noticia/un-triunfo-amplio-desafios-complejos/