General Election 16 November 2025 (Presidential Run-Off – 14 December 2025)

On 16 November 2025, Chilean citizens went to the polls to vote in the first round of the general elections. During this election, the presidential seat, all 155 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, as well as 23 of the 50 seats in the Senate, the upper house, were contested. Since none of the presidential candidates received more than 50% of the votes in the first round, the second round of the presidential elections was held on 14 December 2025. Both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate are elected through a list proportional electoral system. Members of the former house serve for a 4-year term, while members of the latter house are elected for an 8-year term, but half of the Senate is renewed every four years (IFES 2025).

Elections in Chile are administered by the Electoral Service, known as SERVEL, which is composed of the Governing Council and the National Director. All five members of the Governing Council are appointed by the President of Chile, with the approval of two-thirds of the Senate (Biblioteca del Congreso 2012).

While there were no reported operational challenges related to electoral administration, the most significant issue was the spread of false information. One group of misleading messages focused on alleged electoral fraud. For example, Servel was accused of failing to upload tally sheets to its website, which is a legal requirement. However, the link circulated in a viral video dated back to 2021. Servel also confirmed that the digitized tally sheets for the current election had, in fact, been uploaded (Echegoyen 2025). Another video alleging fraud showed Servel officials with a ballot box outside a polling station. The Carabineros de Chile, the national gendarmerie, refuted these claims, explaining that the footage depicted an assisted voting procedure conducted outside the premises (CNN Chile 2025). 

A group of misleading messages targeted specific candidates, often using manipulated images or fabricated videos. The winner of the presidential race, José Antonio Kast, appeared in a faked photo supposedly showing him meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. The image was later identified as AI‑generated. Another candidate, Evelyn Matthei, was featured in a false video suggesting she expressed concern over a potential government led by fellow presidential contender Johannes Kaiser. Additional misleading content also circulated involving Kaiser himself (El Mostrador 2025). Women candidates were especially targeted, being subject to sexual insults, aggressive and inflammatory language, and gender-motivated hate speech on social media (Salas 2025).   

This was the first general election after compulsory voting was reinstated in 2022. This requirement was in force until 2012 but then it was removed by amending the Constitution. Voter turnout in the first round reached 85.26%, marking an increase of almost 38% compared to the first round of the non-compulsory 2021 elections. In the second round, 85.12% of eligible voters cast ballots, also a substantial rise of 29.5% from 2021 (International IDEA n. d.). José Antonio Kast, representing the Republic Party, won the presidential election, defeating Jeannette Jara, the candidate nominated by the Communist Party, in the second-round runoff. However, in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the alliance including the party of the defeated candidate outperformed the alliance to which the newly elected president’s party belongs (Servel 2025).