CHILEAN Communist Jeannette Jara will contest a run-off for the country’s presidency with far-right former lawmaker Jose Antonio Kast after Sunday’s election.

Ms Jara, a former labour minister in President Gabriel Boric’s left-wing government, won 27 per cent of the vote.

She wants to expand Chile’s social safety net and tackle money-laundering and drug trafficking.

Ms Jara warned: “It cost us so much to recover our democracy, and we don’t want it to be put at risk today,” as she slammed the “horrible campaign” waged on social media by far-right profiles linked to Mr Kast.

An admirer of US President Donald Trump, Mr Kast, who is opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, came second with nearly 24 per cent of the vote.

His father was a Nazi Party member who fled de-nazification in Germany and his elder brother Miguel a minister in Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

But Mr Kast appears to be in pole position after nearly 70 per cent of votes went to right-wing candidates in Sunday’s first round.

As neither contender received more than 50 per cent of the overall vote, the poll will go to a second round on December 14.

Another 14 per cent of the votes went to Johannes Kaiser, a congressman and a former YouTube provocateur who campaigned as an even more right-wing alternative to Mr Kast.

Chile’s traditional right-wing coalition came fifth, with its candidate Evelyn Matthei winning 12.5 per cent of the vote.

Not all of the divided right is guaranteed to go to Kast. Several Kaiser and Matthei voters interviewed at polling stations on Sunday — including members of the LGBT community, women and atheists — said they’d refuse to support Mr Kast.

There were no other left-wing frontrunners, as all six parties in Chile’s governing coalition threw their weight behind Ms Jara.

It appeared that right-wing parties would hold a decisive majority in the 155-member lower house of Congress after Sunday’s parliamentary elections.