Chile election update

Socialist Michelle Bachelet, who aims to be Chile's first woman president, will face a united right wing in a January 15 runoff after failing to win more than 50 percent of the vote in an election on Sunday.

With 82 percent of the votes counted, Bachelet had 45.8 percent and opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire from the moderate wing of Chile's conservatives, was second with 25.7 percent.

``I would have liked to have won in a first round,'' said a tired looking Bachelet, who promised to campaign the length of Chile before the second-round vote next month.

``Our result could have been better, maybe our message didn't reach enough people with enough force.''

Joaquin Lavin, another candidate from Chile's divided conservatives who have been out of power since Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship ended in 1990, ceded the election and said he would back Pinera in the second round.

``The people have spoken. That's democracy,'' said Lavin, who had about 23 percent of the vote.

If elected Bachelet, a separated mother of three who was tortured during Chile's 1973-1990 dictatorship, would extend the 15-year rule of a center-left coalition that has cut poverty by half and overseen the country's transformation into the region's star economy.