The Chilean far right scored a major victory in Sunday’s elections for the newly reconstituted constitutional assembly, all but extinguishing any remaining hope of a new, progressive constitution in Chile.

The results of the election for the rebranded “Constitutional Council” would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Now in their second attempt to create a constitution, the drafting body still has a popular mandate to replace the Magna Carta imposed by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in 1980. However, the markedly right-wing council reflects a massive sea change in Chilean politics compared to October 2019, when the country erupted in protests against the neoliberal government of Sebastián Piñera.

The newly formed council will have fifty-one elected seats, of which twenty-three will be occupied by representatives of the far-right Republican Party, eleven from the traditional right, and only sixteen from the Left (plus one representative of indigenous peoples). In short, Sunday’s results were an electoral disaster of historic proportions for the Chilean left — the only comparable precedent being the rejection of the proposed constitution in a 2022 national plebiscite.