SANTIAGO, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Chile's centrist presidential candidates are lagging behind the polarized favorites on the right and left ahead of Sunday's election, but could play roles as kingmakers in an expected second-round run-off.
Yasna Provoste, 51, a former teacher, sits in third place in opinion polls for the powerful center-left Christian Democratic party, behind hard-right front-runner Jose Antonio Kast and leftist former student protest leader Gabriel Boric.
Sebastian Sichel, 44, a lawyer and independent allied to the center-right ruling coalition, is in fourth.
Both have been squeezed out - at least according to the polls - by voters shifting to radical candidates amid anger over inequality, crime and immigration.
Most pollsters forecast that Kast and Boric will seize the top two spots needed to head to a run-off in December, though both will fall well short of the 50% plus one vote needed to win outright. Luring voters from their centrist rivals will be key.
But it's unclear how moderate voters would lean in a run-off. Voting is voluntary in Chile, so they may abstain - or take their cue from their first choice candidates.
Sichel, backed by the conservative government of President Sebastian Pinera, has criticized Boric, but also distanced himself from Kast, who has praised the "economic legacy" of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Some members of the ruling coalition have put pressure on him to give Kast his backing.
"I will not accept blackmail from those who want me to transform into someone that I am not," Sichel said last month. "It seems that some want to go back to the past and support the old right."
'DEMOCRACY VS POPULISM'
In a Pulso Ciudadano poll of probable voters, released earlier in November, Kast had the support of 27.3%, Boric had 23.7%, Provoste had 13.5% and Sichel had 11.3%.
Pollsters are split about whether Kast or Boric would win in a head-to-head. Some polls show that either Provoste or Sichel would beat out both favorites in a second round - if they could make it though.
Provoste, who has indigenous ancestry and is the only woman among the seven presidential candidates, has clashed with the government, and her voters would more likely shift allegiance to Boric than Kast, though some analysts point to her conservative religious values as clashing with her leftist credentials.
"She has assumed a left-wing discourse, but she does not come from the left," said Robert Funk, a political scientist from the University of Chile.
Boric would also need to ease moderate voters' fears about the presence of the Communist Party in his broad coalition.
Provoste has played up her mainstream credentials as a member of the coalition that has ruled copper-rich Chile on-and-off since the return to democracy in 1990.
Under a banner of sustainable growth, she has pledged to rebuild the country from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and after it was convulsed by angry social uprisings in 2019 against inequality. She promises "governability over populism."
"We are heirs to a government coalition, the broadest and also the most successful in recent years in our country," she recently told a business forum.
Sichel has been critical of what he says are inconsistencies in the programs and economic plans of both Kast and Boric.
"This is our most important election of the 21st century," he said in a meeting with business leaders this month. "What's at play here is not only democracy against violence, but also against populism."
