By Alexander Villegas and Fabian Cambero
SANTIAGO (Reuters) -Chile's governing coalition candidate Jeannette Jara led early results in Sunday's presidential race with 26.2% of the vote, trailed closely behind by far-right Jose Antonio Kast, in an early sign of strength for the conservative opposition.
With about 15% of votes counted, Kast held 24.9% of the vote. If Jara maintains her lead, she would become the country's first candidate from the Communist Party to reach a runoff.
The two candidates are set to face off on December 14 in a runoff, pitting two political extremes against each other at a time when voters are overwhelmingly worried about crime and immigration.
Those law-and-order issues marked a far cry from the wave of left-wing optimism and hopes of drafting a new constitution that brought current President Gabriel Boric, who isn't allowed to run for reelection, to power.
Jara would face an uphill battle as pollsters favor a right-wing victory in December as conservative forces are expected to coalesce around Kast, founder of the far-right Republican Party.
Eight candidates appeared on Sunday's ballot, but would have needed to get 50% plus one vote to win the election outright. In a shift from the previous election, voting was mandatory for Chile's 15.7 million registered voters.
FROM MINISTER TO LEFT COALITION LEADER
Jara, 51, was Boric's labor minister and beat a crowded primary field in June to become the government's coalition candidate.
Jara has touted accomplishments including passing a long-awaited pension reform and increasing the minimum wage, but has also faced criticism for a sticky unemployment rate which currently stands at 8.5%.
She has downplayed her Communist Party ties and vowed to represent a broad left-wing coalition, presenting proposals such as increasing the minimum wage while boosting funding for social welfare and the health system.
Jara also has proposed strengthening arms control, increasing technological surveillance on the border and lifting banking secrecy laws to pursue organized crime groups.
This is Kast's second presidential runoff after facing off against Boric. The far-right candidate has built his platform around clamping down on crime and immigration.
He's proposed building a border wall with trenches, kicking out all undocumented migrants and deploying the military to high-crime neighborhoods.
He addressed security when he returned to his hometown of Paine south of Santiago to vote.
"You can ask all the neighbors, even in a small town ... whether they feel safe or not. And most people will tell you they are afraid."
CONGRESS UP FOR GRABS
The previous election saw an abstention rate of 53% in the first-round vote and the large number of apathetic or undecided residents set to cast ballots adds a wild card to the race.
Most of Congress is also up for grabs, with the entirety of the 155-member lower house and 23 of the country's 50 Senate seats in contention.
The governing leftist coalition currently has a minority in both chambers and right-wing majorities in both could set the stage for Congress and the presidency to be controlled by the right for the first time since the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in 1990.
(Reporting by Alexander Villegas and Fabian Cambero, additional reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Sarah Morland in Santiago; Editing by Alistair Bell, Andrew Heavens, Christian Plumb and Diane Craft)
