Chileans in Utah will be among the voters casting ballots in Chile's presidential election

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Chilean expatriates in Utah will be among the voters in Chile's presidential election on Sunday.
Voting in Salt Lake City, one of 10 U.S. cities where Chileans can cast ballots, will go from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Leftist Jeannette Jara and conservative José Antonio Kast are the presidential contenders.

SALT LAKE CITY — Chileans head to the polls Sunday to pick a new president, and a contingent from the country now living in Utah will be among those casting ballots.

Chileans in the United States may be far from the South American country, but that doesn't mean they've stopped caring about what happens there, said Angela Rojas, from Chile but now living in Provo. Chileans in Utah "still have family in Chile and see the conditions of the Chilean people and want things to get better," said Rojas, who will be among the voters.

For some Chileans in Utah, immigration to the country is a big concern, particularly from Venezuela and Colombia. Crime, too, is a big issue.

The first round of presidential voting on Nov. 16 narrowed the list of Chilean presidential hopefuls from eight to just two, Jeannette Jara Roman, a leftist candidate representing the Communist Party, and José Antonio Kast, a conservative candidate representing the Republican Party. Jara was the top vote-getter on Nov. 16, pulling nearly 26.9% of the vote compared to the 23.9% that Kast garnered. But Kast has been leading polls in the lead-up to the final round, and observers expect him to win, according to Reuters.

"Chileans aren't looking at whether you're Republican or not. I think they're going to vote for a different candidate. I think they're going to vote for Kast because he brings something different," said Miguel Echeverria, a Chilean now living in Orem who also plans to vote on Sunday. Demonstrations and chaos have been regular things in recent years, and Chileans are now looking for "a candidate who brings hope and well-being to the country."

Chileans in Utah will be among those casting ballots in Chile's presidential election on Sunday. Chileans also voted in the first round of voting on Nov. 16, at the Sheraton Hotel in Salt Lake City, pictured here. (Photo: Tim Vandenack, KSL.com)

Chile is currently led by leftist President Gabriel Boric.

Voting also took place in Utah in the Nov. 16 balloting, and it will be held on Sunday at the same place as before, the Sheraton Hotel in Salt Lake City. The polling place will operate from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Salt Lake City is one of 10 U.S. cities where expatriate Chileans will be able to vote and among many more foreign locales around the world.

While Jara narrowly edged past Kast in the first round of voting, according to overall totals from Nov. 16, expatriate Chileans sided more strongly with the leftist candidate. According to results from the Chilean Electoral Service, which oversees elections, 46.7% of Chileans voting abroad cast their ballots for Jara followed by Kast, who garnered 16.9% support. Some 64,000 Chileans voted abroad, a small fraction of the 13.45 million ballots cast in all.

According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the population of foreign-born Chileans in Utah as of 2022 totaled nearly 3,500. Rojas said they're scattered all around the state.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.