Paul Moss

Chile is still one of the safest and more stable countries in the region, but there has been a growing perception of crime, particularly organized crime, growing.

Immigration has risen in the country since 2017, and certainly right-wing candidates like José Antonio Kast capitalized on that.

They made this link.

blaming immigration for rising crime, even though some studies suggest that actually foreigners in Chile, on average, commit fewer crimes than Chileans.

But certainly this became an issue that really, I think, a lot of voters were very incensed by, really, going into this campaign.

Gabriel Boric did introduce some sweeping new measures, particularly welfare measures.

He raised the

free health care for some of the poorest Chileans, shorten the working week.

So there were various policies that he did manage to pass through.

But I think one thing that was clear on this election campaign was some voters didn't feel like the current government was serving them well enough.

They wanted to see change.

And for them, Cass represented that.

Now, he has, as I said, won by a wide margin, but that still leaves an awful lot of people who voted for a communist and a country which, I guess, seems to be very polarised.

That's right.

And I think what was interesting, speaking to some voters at the ballot boxes, some of them were saying that they felt quite disenfranchised by what they saw as quite an extreme choice.

They didn't like the far right rhetoric of José Antonio Kass, but also didn't particularly like the idea of someone who is a member of the Communist Party, even if she had tried to position herself more to the centre left in recent months as she tried to appeal to a wider audience.

I think that did leave a lot of voters feeling quite disenfranchised and feeling like they had to vote for whichever they saw as the sort of better of two options they didn't particularly like.

But I think you're right to suggest that there will be polarisation now going forward, particularly when it comes to the issue of migration, with critics saying that it needs to be reduced.

Supporters, though, saying that migration is absolutely crucial for Chile's workforce.

Ione Wells in Santiago, and we have some breaking news that's come in just as we record this podcast.