But Sebastián Piñera may well break that precedent on Jan. 17. Having won the first-round election on Dec. 13 with 44 percent of the vote, Piñera fell shy of the simple majority required to avoid a run-off. He now faces Eduardo Frei, a former president representing the governing center-left Concertación coalition, who took only 30 percent of the first-round vote.

In a country that has not seen a right-wing government since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, part of Sebastián Piñera's success stems from his record as a centrist. He says he voted to remove Augusto Pinochet from power in the pivotal 1988 referendum that returned Chile to democracy, and on the campaign trail he called Pinochet Chile's worst president.

Piñera has also taken liberal stances on social issues. In a controversial televised campaign commercial, Piñera called upon Chileans to respect homosexual couples -- though he stopped short of supporting gay marriage. He also supports permitting the use of the morning-after contraceptive pill -- a touchy subject in a highly Catholic country that legalized divorce just six years ago.

Broadly speaking, the two candidates differ little in terms of economic policy, reflecting the fact that the ideological chasm that characterizes the Andean political spectrum does not exist in centrist Chile. Left-wing Frei supports the country's neoliberal economic model, while right-wing Piñera pledges to maintain the Concertación's social safety net.

As an Economist Intelligence Unit report published last month put it, "A Piñera victory would bring no substantive shift in Chile's economic model, as there is strong consensus across the political spectrum over economic policy."

Piñera's primary talking point has been his promise to deliver higher economic growth rates and generate more employment. President Michelle Bachelet presided over an economy characterized by a steadily declining rate of growth prior to the world economic crisis, dipping from 5.6 percent in 2005 to 3.2 percent in 2008, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit report.

Piñera, a billionaire businessman himself, wants to hoist that rate back up to 6 percent, by inverting Bachelet's approach and emphasizing economic growth over redistribution.

That emphasis seems to have found a friendly reception. "In order to make the safety net sustainable in the long term, Chile has to generate more economic growth," political scientist and commentator Patricio Navia said in a telephone interview.

Piñera has also been helped by the serious challenges the Concertación has faced from the left. Congressman Marco Enríquez-Ominami broke away from the coalition to run on its left as an independent. A handsome, 36 year-old filmmaker who openly supports gay marriage, abortion, and replacing Chile's dictatorship-era constitution, Enríquez-Ominami derided both Piñera and Frei as "leaders of the past."

His audacious approach scored him 20 percent of the first round vote last month -- largely at the Concertación's expense -- but his gambit to present an alternative parliamentary list failed, and he let his own seat in the House of Deputies lapse to campaign for president.

Frei lost another 6 percent of the vote to Communist Party candidate Jorge Arrate.

That leaves Frei scrambling to regroup the Concertación's fractured coalition -- and to recoup its hemorrhaged votes, which he will need in order to win the second-round election. According to an analysis by Chile's Center for Public Studies, Frei needs to hold onto all of his first round supporters, while picking up all of Arrate's and more than two-thirds of Enríquez-Ominami's, if he is to beat Piñera.

Such a scenario does not bode well for Frei, given the high levels of voter apathy that have characterized this election. Only 9.2 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 29 registered for the December election, the lowest level since the return to democracy, according to the New York Times. Worse still for Frei, Chile's youth has traditionally supported the Concertación.

Political scientist and Chile expert Peter Siavelis called a Frei victory "possible but not likely," adding that Frei faces a greater obstacle than his opponent -- Chileans' lack of interest in re-electing the ruling coalition.

"Any time a government has been in charge for 20 years, people are going to want a change," Siavelis said, referring to the Concertación. "Piñera is running a good campaign," Siavelis conceded, but "the major political issue is disgust with the Concertación coalition."

Patricio Navia agreed. He says President Michelle Bachelet faced a similar malaise when she campaigned four years ago, but prevailed because she represented "a combination of change and continuity when she came into office."

The aging Frei has so far failed to inspire the same feeling of dynamism. "By having a former president as their candidate, the Concertación opted for continuity without change," Navia said.

Though Siavelis called the Concertación's decision to present Frei as its candidate a "strategic error," he said that losing the presidency for the first time in 20 years is "not the end of the world" for the coalition, noting that they will retain a congressional majority.

"That's been the beauty of the Chilean transition," Siavelis said. "It's incremental."

**Roque Planas is a journalist and a graduate student in the Global Joint Master's Program in journalism and Latin American studies at New York University, where he is a Henry MacCracken Fellow.