FOR weeks Chileans had been bracing for a nail-biter. After an inconclusive first round of the presidential election in November, the result of a run-off on December 17th looked uncertain. In the end it wasn’t even close. Sebastián Piñera of the centre-right Chile Vamos (Let’s Go Chile) coalition trounced his centre-left rival, Alejandro Guillier, a senator and former television anchorman, by 55% to 45%. The moderate right has done well of late in South American countries such as Argentina and Brazil, which have become weary of left-wing populism. In Chile Mr Piñera’s victory can be seen as more a vote for continuity than radical change.

In his acceptance speech on the Alameda, the main drag of the capital, Santiago, a jubilant Mr Piñera promised unity, dialogue and consensus. Crowds of supporters cheered, but also breathed a sigh of relief. Earlier opinion polls had shown the candidates neck and neck. That might have stirred more of Mr Piñera’s supporters to vote; unusually, turnout of just under 50% was higher than in the first round.

The result has shaken the centre-left. Mr Guillier, who ran as an heir to President Michelle Bachelet, called it a “hard defeat”. The bloc never recovered from a graft scandal in 2015 involving her son (though not the president herself). It has split over the pace and depth of her leftish reforms, such as higher corporate taxes, tighter labour laws and free college. In the first round Mr Guillier was nearly bested by the candidate of a new leftist party.

By contrast, Chile Vamos ran a united, disciplined and well-funded campaign. A centrist message of economic growth, coupled with more handouts for the needy, appealed to voters outside its heartland. Mr Piñera, a 68-year-old billionaire businessman, seemed a safer pair of hands than Mr Guillier, whose ambiguous manifesto and increasingly left-wing rhetoric may have put off many Chileans.

Back to the future

Unlike his rival, Mr Piñera is a seasoned politician, with a PhD in economics from Harvard. He served as a senator from 1990 to 1998. After losing to Ms Bachelet in 2006, he beat the left’s presidential candidate four years later, then presided over economic growth that averaged more than 5% a year, boosted by the high price of copper, Chile’s main export. But he underestimated swelling discontent over meagre public support for the growing middle class. Massive protests in his first term by students demanding free college paved the way for Ms Bachelet’s landslide win in 2013.

Mr Piñera is not immune to controversy. He was once fined for breaching securities law and accused of massaging employment and poverty figures to flatter his government’s economic record, though he denied it. His victory should nevertheless lift animal spirits. He promises to double growth, once he takes office in March, from a sluggish 1.8% a year on Ms Bachelet’s watch, and to create more and better jobs. Helpfully, the price of copper is recovering.

To mollify the middle class, he has called for extra public spending of $14bn over four years, or 1.4% of GDP per year. This would go towards pensions, health, infrastructure and education, including free nursery schools. Half of this will be financed by higher growth, Mr Piñera says; the rest by slashing “ineffective” and “unnecessary” spending. The overall tax burden will stay at around 20% of GDP.

To many conservatives’ dismay, Mr Piñera has promised to keep Ms Bachelet’s free university tuition for the poorest 60% of students. In the campaign’s final weeks, he agreed to extend free education in vocational colleges to all students but the richest tenth. He must also tackle the country’s strained pension system. In 1980 the then-dictator, Augusto Pinochet, introduced obligatory private pension funds (as it happens, the brainchild of Mr Piñera’s brother, José). But rising life expectancy and the fact that many workers have contributed only intermittently to their pots mean that many have ended up with smaller pensions than they hoped for. Mr Piñera wants extra top-ups for the lowest pensions. He also wants to encourage more funds to compete to manage pensions, and perhaps to create a state-run fund.

Although Mr Piñera’s mandate looks strong, Chile Vamos lacks a majority in congress. He will therefore have to rely on other parties—probably the centrist Christian Democrats and independents—to pass laws. This helps explain his moderate tone.

Yet moderation is also what Chileans want. Despite the more radical left’s strong performance, Chile still looks most comfortable in the centre: at once pro-market and socially aware. Although less egalitarian than European social democracies, it wants to resemble them. Chileans will reward politicians who grasp this.