Gabriel Boric, a millennial former student protest leader, won Chile's presidential runoff following a bruising campaign pitting him against José Antonio Kast, a free-market firebrand likened to Donald Trump.
With more than 90% of polling stations reporting, Gabriel Boric had 56% of the votes, compared to 44% for his opponent, lawmaker José Antonio Kast.
Boric, 35, will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office in March. He was among several activists elected to Congress in 2014 after leading protests for higher quality education. On the stump, he vowed to “bury” the neoliberal economic model left by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship and raise taxes on the “super rich” to expand social services, fight inequality and boost protections of the environment.
Boric was able to reverse the difference by a larger margin than even pre-election opinion polls forecast by expanding beyond his base in the capital, Santiago, and attracting voters in rural areas who don’t side with political extremes. For example, in the northern region of Antofagasta, where he finished third in the first round of voting, he trounced Kast by almost 20 points.
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