Chilean presidential elections: Tohá in, Bachelet out

CHILE - In Brief 09 Mar 2025 by Robert Funk

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With the end of the antipodean summer comes the start of the school year in Chile. The days get shorter, traffic gets worse, and presidential candidates begin to position themselves. While on the center-right Evelyn Matthei has been a fairly official candidate – and has been leading in the polls – for some time, there was a question as to who the center-left would choose. Many in the Socialist Party wanted former president Michelle Bachelet to run, as polls show that she may be the left’s best hope against Matthei (although they still had her behind by about five points). But last week Bachelet announced she is not running. At just about the same time, Carolina Tohá of the center-left Party for Democracy resigned as minister of the interior and announced her candidacy for the presidency. So whereas Matthei had been running pretty much on her own, now it seems we have a race. Or do we? While it was always likely that Matthei would begin to do less well as other campaigns – to her left and to her right – got under way, Carolina Tohá does not seem like much of a threat. First, while Tohá is an experienced politician, a political moderate and an efficient public servant, she is not charismatic. This is reflected in the polls, which for weeks had her pretty much in last place. Although her campaign launch seems to have benefitted her – this week’s Cadem poll shows a 7% jump in support for Tohá – she remains in fourth place behind Matthei, Johannes Kaiser, and José Antonio Kast (although only one point separates her from Kast). Second, her most recent and prominent role was as Gabriel Boric’s interior minister. In this position she was responsible for public security, which ...