SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chileans face perhaps the starkest choice in the history of their country’s young democracy when they vote next month in a presidential runoff that pits hard-right José Antonio Kast against communist Jeannette Jara .

Neither candidate cleared the 50% threshold to win, but Kast heads into the second round of voting best positioned to succeed after an unprecedented 70% of voters backed an array of right-wing parties in Sunday’s poll.

An ultraconservative lawyer who vows to deport Chile’s estimated 300,000 immigrants without legal status and speaks nostalgically of Chile’s brutal dictatorship , Kast on Sunday told supporters that his Dec. 14 race against Jara was a choice between “two models of society” — chaos and order, stagnation and progress, left and right.

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