Santiago (AFP) - Chileans waited in long lines on Sunday to vote in elections dominated by far-right promises of a crackdown on crime and mass migrant deportations.

Vote-counting began after a nail-biting contest pitting the left against the hard right, framed by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs.

Pre-election polls showed Jeannette Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of a broad leftist coalition, winning Sunday’s first round of voting for president.

But far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast is tipped to prevail in December’s run-off.

Chileans are also choosing members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate in the first general elections with compulsory voting since 2012.

- Nostalgia for the past -

Chile is one of Latin America’s safest countries, but the murder rate has doubled in a decade to exceed that of the United States.

The crime surge has happened in tandem with a doubling of the immigrant population since 2017, now comprising 8.8 percent of the population.

Wall-to-wall news coverage of crime has led to a clamor for a “mano dura” (iron fist), with El Salvador’s gang-busting President Salvador Bukele held up as a model for how to pacify gangs.

“I hope that some day we’ll go back to the way we were before,” Mario Faundez, an 87-year-old retired salesman, who voted in the wealthy Santiago district of Providencia, told AFP.

“If we have to kill (criminals), so be it,” he added.

The vote is seen as a litmus test for South America’s left, which has been sent packing in Argentina and Bolivia, and faces a stiff challenge in Colombian and Brazilian elections next year.

Jara served as labor minister under outgoing center-left president Gabriel Boric.

Ultra-right candidate Johannes Kaiser told AFP the election was about ending Latin America’s “disconnection…from the United States and the free world.”

- Walls, fences, trenches -

Kast has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to keep out newcomers from poorer countries to the north, such as Venezuela.

Former YouTube polemicist Kaiser, a fan of Argentina’s Javier Milei, is the most radical of the candidates.

The 49-year-old libertarian MP energized youth voters with rock-themed rallies and blunt language about crime, immigration and the left.

Conservative ex-minister Evelyn Matthei, the 72-year-old establishment choice, struggled to make her mark on the campaign.

- Uphill battle -

Jara campaigned as a moderate with a track record of social reforms, including lowering the working week from 45 hours to 40 and raising the minimum wage by nearly 50 percent.

She has pledged to ensure “every Chilean family can easily make it to the end of the month.”

The ultraconservative Kast would be the first far-right leader since the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet if elected.

He has defended Pinochet, whose regime killed thousands of dissidents under the pretext of fighting communism during the Cold War.

Patricia Orellana, a 56-year-old Jara voter, said she feared a “rollback of many gains for women” if Kast or Kaiser won.

Both men oppose any relaxation of Chile’s already very restricted abortion rights.