A resounding victory; complex challenges

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

José Antonio Kast's landslide victory not only marks a change in power, but also confirms the decline of the dictatorship as the organizing force in 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 organizing principle and the adoption of compulsory voting consolidate a less institutionalized and more volatile scenario, which poses significant challenges for the governability and success of the new government.

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

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

Finally, among 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 parameters by which the electorate will evaluate his performance. These are extremely complex policy areas. This complexity takes on special relevance in the context of a weakened party system with a less politicized voter base, 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 least, convince the electorate that decisive action is being taken on these issues.

The political projection of the new government will depend on not deepening the rifts of the past and, at the same time, on showing results in the present. All this without the symbolic and partisan 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 UC Institute of Political Science and researcher at Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, and Diego Díaz R., UC School of Government.

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