Chileans will choose between a Socialist single mother and a conservative multimillionaire in a presidential runoff next month, after center-left coalition leader Michelle Bachelet fell shy of an outright majority on Sunday.
Aligned with President Ricardo Lagos' ruling coalition that has governed Chile since the collapse of General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship in 1990, Bachelet easily defeated two feuding right-wing candidates, who say they have now joined forces.
Businessman and economist Sebastian Pinera, who trailed Bachelet in second place by about 20 percentage points on Sunday night, came late to the race but surged in the polls with a barnstorming campaign dubbed "The Locomotive."
He earned a boost on Sunday night when fellow conservative Joaquin Lavin quickly conceded and joined the campaign to defeat Bachelet.
"Between the two of us, Sebastian, we had more votes than Bachelet and we have a clear chance to win the presidency," Lavin said before finding Pinera at a downtown hotel to personally offer his support. The two embraced amid applause from hundreds of supporters.
Bachelet, who had once been imprisoned by Chile's military dictatorship and later went on to serve as the country's defense minister, won 45.8 percent of the vote with 96 percent of ballots counted.
Pinera was a distant second with 25.4 percent of the vote, while Lavin had captured 23.2 percent.
Opinion polls during the campaign have showed that Bachelet would likely triumph in any runoff scenario.
On Sunday night, a top aide for Bachelet, Jaime Mulet, downplayed concerns over the two right-wing candidates winning more combined votes.
"Their votes cannot be added. You don't add apples and pears," Mulet said.
Bachelet could pick up support from voters who backed fourth-place finisher Tomas Hirsch. Representing a coalition that includes the Communist Party, Hirsch received 5.1 percent of votes counted.
Lagos, who cannot run for re-election, is ending his term with an approval rate of over 70 percent. His successor will be sworn in on March 11 for a four-year term.
The president said his coalition won a majority in both houses of congress on Sunday, although no final results were available.
Both Bachelet and Pinera campaigned on promises to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, curb an 8 percent unemployment rate and rising crime in large cities -- with no major changes to the current economic model.
Chileans appeared to put the legacy of Pinochet behind them during the election.
The 90-year-old former dictator played no role in the campaign.
He was not even able to cast a vote on Sunday, as he remained under house arrest, facing human rights and corruption charges.
Bachelet is the daughter of an air force general who opposed the Pinochet coup and was jailed and tortured by his peers and died in prison.
Bachelet herself was also briefly jailed along with her mother. Both were blindfolded and mistreated in prison before being allowed to go into exile, first in Australia then in East Germany.
The candidate for the center-right National Renewal party, Pinera is unusual among Chilean conservatives, having openly opposed the Pinochet dictatorship.
Pinera has made inroads against Bachelet since his entrance to the race in May with a platform aimed at the middle class and the poor, including offers of pensions to housewives and incentives to small and medium-sized enterprises.
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