Who is Jeannette Jara?

Villa Alemana, Chile – Cumbia music blasts from the speakers of a makeshift stage at a small, unassuming park in Villa Alemana, part of Chile’s central region.

Hundreds of locals crowd onto the paved park grounds. Pockets of friends dance together, and children race around their parents’ legs.

They have come to hear one of the frontrunners in Chile's presidential race: Jeannette Jara.

A former labour minister, Jara is the nominee representing the leftist coalition in Sunday's election.

But it is her membership in the Communist Party that makes her presidential bid historic. Not since Chile's return to democracy in 1990 has a Communist candidate enjoyed such broad, mainstream support.

For some, Jara's success is a barometer for the economic malaise fuelling this year's election cycle. For others, her candidacy is a symptom of the growing polarisation within Chilean politics.

Jara has campaigned on the former, playing up her working-class roots. She has pledged to support Chile's public healthcare system, build affordable housing and raise wages.

“Considering that politics generates so much mistrust, being able to gather like this, with hard-working people, really fills my heart," Jara, 51, told the crowd in Villa Alemana, dressed in blue jeans and a loose-fitting blazer rolled up at the sleeves.

“It will be my priority to improve people's quality of life."

A push against centrism?

That emphasis on affordability — not to mention her surprise ascent to the head of the race — has earned Jara comparisons to another rising star on the left, Zohran Mamdani of the United States.

In June, both Jara and Mamdani scored pivotal, come-from-behind victories in their respective primaries.

Mamdani handily won the Democratic nomination for the New York City mayoral race, and Jara swept 60 percent of the primary vote to represent the governing Unity for Chile coalition in the presidential race.

Both results, announced within days of one another, signalled to some analysts a rejection of the centrist establishment on the left, in favour of bolder proposals and grassroots campaigns. Mamdani has since gone on to win New York City's general election.

Jara similarly sits atop the pre-election polls ahead of Chile's first round of voting.

Activa Research, a polling firm, found that 24.9 percent of respondents planned to back Jara, compared to 16.9 percent for her next closest rival, far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast.

Mireya Davila, a political science expert at the University of Chile, credits some of that momentum to Jara's backstory.

“[Jara] has a lot of political instinct and personal charm," said Davila. “She came from the low-income sector and worked from the ground up."

Working-class roots

Jara was born in Conchali, a working-class neighbourhood in the capital Santiago, one year into the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

His government, which lasted from 1973 to 1990, was marked by the repression of left-wing voices. Being a communist was illegal, and at least 3,065 people were killed during that time. Thousands more were tortured.

That period was also marked by high inflation and poverty. Suffering from financial hardships, Jara's father, a mechanic, left to work abroad in Brazil when she was only eight years old.

Around the same time, her mother moved north to the city of Iquique to earn money in a restaurant. Jara and her siblings were briefly left in the care of their grandmother.

By age 13, Jara was working as a seasonal fruit harvester. By 14, she had joined the Communist Youth Party and was protesting Pinochet's rule.

As an adult, after the fall of Pinochet, she worked both in the public sector and with labour unions. Under President Michelle Bachelet, from 2016 to 2018, she served as undersecretary for social welfare.

Later, as labour minister in the outgoing administration of President Gabriel Boric, she spearheaded initiatives to decrease the work week from 45 hours to 40 and reform Chile's privatised pension system.

Campaigning on affordability

Jara told the podcast El Bien Y El Mal last month that she initially thought her working-class roots would disqualify her from a presidential run.

“I didn’t see how it was possible," she said, citing a lack of precedent. “Now I’m absolutely convinced: Having people from working-class origins as political leaders is necessary to fulfil democracy.”

At her campaign rally in Villa Alemana, supporters explained that they identified with Jara's down-to-earth persona.

“It’s the first time a candidate has represented me so much,” said Isidora Hernandez, a 20-year-old student.

Another supporter, Clarissa Cofre, had travelled from a neighbouring town near Jara in person.

“I wanted to get to know this senora!” the 87-year-old pensioner chuckled. “She speaks a common language, not like other politicians who talk with such exaggeration."

Jara has made affordability a pillar of her presidential bid. One of her campaign pledges is to increase the minimum wage from 529,000 Chilean pesos per month — about $560 — to 750,000 pesos, or $807.

She has argued that current minimum wage is not enough to scrape by in one of South America’s most expensive countries, where debt plagues 66 percent of Chileans.

Cofre, who worked in hospital administration for 20 years, believes Jara’s proposals will lead to positive change.

“People need higher salaries, and also more job opportunities. There are too many people that are unemployed," she said.

Fears of crime

Yet not all Chileans are convinced. Virginia Peredo, a domestic worker, told Al Jazeera she “would never” vote for the left-wing candidate, offering a blunt explanation: “She is a communist."

Peredo was one of the nearly 200 supporters at a rally for Jara's right-wing rival Kast in Copiapo, a mining town some 750km (466 miles) north of Villa Alemana.

Many of Kast's supporters believe that Jara stands for the status quo. Under President Boric, Jara's former boss, Chile saw a period of slow economic growth.

Boric has also struggled to quell concerns about an increase in organised crime and undocumented immigration. Peredo, for instance, said she is afraid to leave the house at night.

Although she moved to Chile from Bolivia 10 years ago, she supports Kast’s hardline stance, which includes militarising the country's borders and deporting all irregular immigrants.

“The good ones can stay, but the bad ones have to go,” Peredo said of immigrants to Chile. "They make us all look bad."

Kast, a 59-year-old Catholic and founder of the far-right Republican Party, has leaned into those fears of immigration and violence to build his base of support.

A report released in April from the University of San Sebastian found that activity linked to organised crime increased by 8.4 percent between 2022 and 2023.

“This is not a crisis. It’s an emergency,” Kast told his supporters in Copiapo.

Christopher Sabatini, senior research fellow for Latin America at the think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that Kast’s “iron-fisted approach to crime” has struck a chord among voters.

“If you look at number-one demands, security, crime and immigration are all up there. Those are not what Jara is running on,” he said.

Sabatini sees parallels between Kast and the rise of other right-wing leaders, like Donald Trump in the United States and Javier Milei in Argentina.

In Milei's case, his victory in the 2023 presidential race was seen as a sign of discontent with the left-wing Peronist government that was in power at the time.

“[Kast is] exploiting people’s fears very effectively, in the same way Milei was able to exploit people’s hate with 16 years of Peronism, and Trump was able to with immigration," Sabatini explained.

An uphill battle

Even though Jara is leading in the polls, experts warn Kast could overtake her, particularly if the presidential election progresses to a second round.

Eight candidates are currently in the running. If none of them wins a majority of votes on Sunday, there will be a run-off between the top two contenders on December 14.

One factor to consider is how the number of candidates is splitting the right-wing vote in the first round of the election, according to Davila, the political scientist at the University of Chile.

The conservative opposition did not hold a primary ahead of this year's election, so there are multiple candidates appealing to right-wing voters, including former Labour Minister Evelyn Matthei and member of Parliament Johannes Kaiser.

Should the presidential election advance to a run-off, as expected, Davila explained that the last right-wing candidate left standing would be able to consolidate those votes.

“The right is stronger, because [their candidates] add more votes,” said Davila.

But, Davila added, there is another wild card shaping the race: the return of compulsory voting.

For the first time since 2012, all eligible voters will be required to cast a ballot in the presidential race, or else face a fine.

The expected increase in voter turnout is slated to add a degree of uncertainty to the election's outcome. “Chile has an obligatory voting system, so it’s volatile," Davila said.

At Jara's rally in Villa Alemana, the atmosphere was jubilant despite the candidate's long odds.

Speaking to journalists after the event, Jara argued it was her grassroots support that would buoy her at the ballot box.

“Many times, those of us in politics are very good at talking, but we don’t listen to those in front of us,” she said. “I hope to always be in contact with the people.”