Colombia's 2026 Presidential Election: Analyzing First Round Results

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio looks at the numbers which have emerged from the first round, and what they mean. 

Transcript

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Hi everyone, welcome back to Latin America Correspondent, where today we're going to be taking a bit of a close look at the um the numbers, the statistics to emerge from the first round of the Colombian election a few days ago. The first thing to say, I think, is that um absolutely it was a surprise that uh Abelardo de la Espriella polled uh significantly above what we thought he was going to, what the um what the polls had suggested. The final numbers gave him 44% of the vote to Ivan Cepeda's 41% of the vote. Now that equates to about 700,000 votes. Um the the all of those votes, or all of his extra votes, if you like, actually came from Paloma Valencia, the centre-right candidate who uh did uh significantly worse than than anybody expected, but she still uh got seven percent of the vote. So that seven percent needs to go somewhere, and it will almost certainly go to the La Espriella. In fact, she uh immediately declared for the La Espriella uh on losing, as did her primary sort of um supporter godfather figure, Alvaro Uribe. Alvaro Uribe, of course, hugely controversial in in Colombia, polarizes uh polarizes the field. Um he is um an inescapable figure politically uh who has been roundly against the peace process from the beginning and was also somebody is also somebody who has been indicted of charges of um um uh corruption abuses and arbitrary uh killings as well. And all of that um continues. And so that the centre right is, I wouldn't say it's disgraced, but it's definitely tainted and doesn't draw interest and passion in the same way as again these maverick figures that we've seen over the course of the last few years, of which, of course, of whom, of course, uh the Las Prieya is is a representative. Now, I think one of the questions is having with Uribe and Valencia having declared for him for the Les Prieya, is will he sort of accept that that position? Will he accept being the standard centre right wing candidate? Because potentially that could be a poison chalice and turn some people off. So it'll be interesting to see how he sort of responds to that and takes it forward. And then I think we also, because if you look at that, so if you look just statistically at that, the fact that he pulled 44% and that Paloma Valencia has 7%, that on the face of it would take uh him over the 51% and suggest that Ivan Zebeda has no uh no hope whatsoever. But actually, i I think it's important to look back at what happened with the Gustavo Pedro four years ago because uh something similar took place then. He was when he when we saw the first round take place at the time, it seemed as though the sort of collective votes of the right wing uh were enough to sink him and that he had no real hope. But actually what ended up happening was because of course um voting in Colombia is not compulsory, so you can get different turnouts across different aspects of different rounds of the election. What we saw is that he was actually able to to motivate to to garner um uh to drive forward a significant increase in uh in votes between the two rounds, in part I think for uh supporting him, but also uh I think uh a lot of those people were choosing not to vote for the right at the time. And I think that's the question for Sabeda. It's not can he take votes from Paloma Valencia, but is can he increase, can he enhance the turnout, both for himself but also uh to um uh in a sort of anti-De la Esprieya vote to be able to to benefit uh to benefit him. We'll see, we'll see on the 21st of of June. It's certainly very, very tight, and uh what we definitely do know is that the La Esprieya uh uh undoubtedly exceeded expectations by by some distance.