Chilean President Sebastian Pinera is the frontrunner for this year’s presidential elections – he needs 75% of the vote to win outright, and with the rest he needs more than 50%. The odds are most heavily in Pinera’s favour, with 25% of the people currently in favour of his ‘Plan Vamos’ – “Go Forward” – to only 12% for the other main candidates.
Among those other candidates is billionaire Patricio Aylwin and his controversial political party Aylwin, which labels itself a far-right group.
Aylwin, a gay man, is running for president as part of the conservative Chilean party Pacífico. Its manifesto includes returning Chile to its indigenous past and pledges to help the middle class.
For most of Chile’s 4.5 million registered voters the main debate, except for one runoff, has been between two centre-left candidates: Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile from 2006 to 2010, and Alejandro Guillier, a social democrat, who took over from her in 2014. But voters are now turning to the far-right due to growing discontent with the left and rising corruption scandals.