CHILEAN communist Jeannette Jara, the country’s former labour minister, won a landslide victory in the primary election for left-wing parties on Sunday.

Ms Jara won 60.5 per cent of the vote in an easy victory.

The win means Ms Jara will be the candidate representing Chile’s incumbent government in November elections, set to face off against right-wing and far-right contenders, who appear to be surging in the polls.

Because of term limits, current President Gabriel Boric cannot run for a second consecutive term.

Ms Jara, a lawyer and member of Chile’s Communist Party, was Mr Boric’s labour minister before resigning to run for president. The runner-up, former interior minister Carolina Toha from the Democratic Socialist Party, took 27.7 per cent.

“Today begins a new path that we will walk together, with the conviction to build a fairer and more democratic Chile,” Ms Jara wrote on social media. “In the face of the threat from the far-right, we respond with unity, dialogue and hope.”

After Mr Boric’s 2022 election, voting was made compulsory, adding unpredictability to this year’s race.

Preliminary turnout figures from electoral authorities showed that turnout was much lower than expected, with just 1.4 million people casting ballots. Chile has some 15.4 million eligible voters.

As labour minister, Ms Jara earned praise for a programme that increased the minimum wage and reduced the working week to 40 hours.

She has earned comparisons to Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s former left-wing president and an icon of female empowerment who governed from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018.

Paying tribute to Ms Bachelet in her victory speech, she said: “She was the one who showed us the path that nothing is impossible.”

Recent opinion polls show growing support for Chile’s right-wing candidates including former lawmaker Jose Antonio Kas and Evelyn Matthei, a former minister of labour.