Free-market champion José Antonio Kast tied with left-wing Gabriel Boric ahead of Sunday's election in Chile

Chile's free-market candidate Jose Antonio Kast and leftist Gabriel Boric are virtually tied among likely voters ahead of Sunday’s election.

According to the data, Kast – who bested Boric in the first electoral round on Nov. 21 – polled at 48.5 percent compared to Boric’s 48.4 percent, according to a survey of 2,218 potential voters conducted by the consulting group AtlasIntel.

Previous polls conducted by AtlasIntel favored Boric by several points, but that lead has diminished in recent days, Reuters reported.

Yet as Chileans prepare to head to the polls, they are faced with a deeply divided country which has been rocked by two years of violent protests and untamed terrorism in the country’s southern regions.  

Chile’s economic model – which helped spur rapid growth and the speedy eradication of poverty – is now under attack.

Also on the table is the future of Chile’s prolific private pension fund administrators (AFPs) and the constitution, which is currently being re-written by a constitutional convention. The days in which Chile experienced an “economic miracle” now feel, to many, like a fever dream.

But Kast has promised Chileans that he would not allow the country to further deteriorate and head down the same path as Cuba or Venezuela. During a final campaign event on Sunday, he said “Chile is not and will never be a Marxist or communist country.”

“The left only promotes poverty, the same poverty that has dragged Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, from where people flee because their narco-dictatorships only brings poverty and misery," he added.

Kast also reiterated his pledge to return stability and law and order to the country – promising to take a stand against violence in the south and crime across major cities. “We will recover peace, order, the rule of law – and above all dignity in people’s lives,” he stressed.

Boric, however, has promised to continue to push social reforms in Chile and has repeatedly called Kast a dangerous right-wing radical who will “only bring instability, more hate and violence” to Chile.

"Kast's program is really worrying. Kast's program is really violent. It is violence against women, violence against native peoples, violence against diversity and violence against the human rights of all,” Boric told supporters at his final campaign rally.

"We are going to make the changes that Chile needs despite any opposition, because Chile has been demanding them for many years," he concluded.