SPECIAL EDITION: THE TIGER TRIUMPHS
Outsider Abelardo de la Espriella swamps Colombia's traditional parties in the presidential first round with over 10 million votes; Petro and Cepeda question results
After surging in the polls during the closing two weeks of the campaign, Abelardo de la Espriella has rocked the Colombian political establishment by winning the first round of the presidential election today. The conservative populist— nicknamed “The Tiger” — ran under his own Defensores de la Patria banner as an outsider challenging the establishment and calling for a hardline crackdown on drug cartels and organized crime. Abelardo won 43.7% of the vote, sweeping the vast central region of the country and surpassing 10 million total votes. It was a stronger first round finish than leftist incumbent President Gustavo Petro managed in 2022 and an immense achievement for an outsider.
There was a very low percentage of blank or spoiled votes for an election called the most polarized in recent memory. Over 98% of the 23.6 million valid votes cast today were for candidates and not blank or nullified in protest.
BREAKING: In a late development minutes before posting this edition, Petro announced tonight in a statement that he “does not accept the results” of the uncertified totals reported tonight by the National Registrar’s Office, citing his own conspiracy theories he’s been raising in recent days that the vote-counting technology of the state entity would be “manipulated” by forces conspiring to rig the election in favor of Abelardo.
Shortly afterwards, Cepeda joined in calling the results into doubt, giving an angry and defiant speech saying there are “indications” that “innumerous” precincts were “atypical” in the vote counting, but provided no details or evidence of the allegations. Cepeda went on to make sweeping allegations of fraud dating back to the March primaries and pointing at “foreign forces” attempting to interfere in the election, naming Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa as behind the conspiracy among others.
The explosive allegations shocked many observers covering the election live on Colombian television, who called them grave allegations against democracy and “the discourse of a sore loser”.
Cepeda falls short
Petro’s chosen successor, hard-left Senator Ivan Cepeda, had been tapped to place first in most polls and media predictions up until yesterday, but finished second and will advance to the June 21 runoff with Abelardo. Cepeda won 40.9% of the vote and carried the western coastal departments as well as the southern and eastern border regions. But Abelardo greatly closed the gap in the Petro stronghold of Bogota that made up much of the incumbent’s winning margin in 2022. Abelardo won 1.5 million votes against Cepeda’s 1.7 million in the national capital, with the rest of the pack of candidates far behind the two leaders.
It should escape no one that Cepeda had the entire state mechanism of Petro’s government working at full steam for his candidacy and yet he fell short of Abelardo’s national margin by about 750,000 votes. He did, however, consolidate the left and outperformed Petro’s 2022 result by a slight margin. It remains unclear yet how - and from where - Cepeda can make up the difference and surpass 50% in the runoff.
But it appears that Cepeda is leaning into a hard-left narrative around his second-place finish, calling his own coalition the “only democratic force” against a “fascist extreme right” in a manner that recalls the Chavista rhetoric of two decades ago, complete with the shrill, shrieking voice of conductors of leftist slogans screaming into a microphone during his speeches. Cepeda is taking Petro’s extreme doomsday messaging and his own longtime personal attacks on former president Alvaro Uribe and sending them in a harsher and more fearmongering direction. Whether this will somehow convince those who voted for Abelardo and Paloma Valencia to vote for him in the runoff is dubious this evening given the results, whether he accepts them or not.
Paloma collapses
It was not a surprise that Senator Paloma Valencia, the establishment center right candidate of the Centro Democratico, fell into third place today. But the collapse of her candidacy in Abelardo’s shadow was stunning. Paloma won just under 7% of the vote and failed to place second in any department in the country. Indeed, Abelardo swamped the base regions of the Centro Democratico like Antioquia, the home region of former president Alvaro Uribe.
In the end, Paloma won only about half of the total votes she had won in the March party primary for the center-right coalition. It was the sharpest indicator that the center-right swung hard in favor of Abelardo’s conservative project even where the Centro Democratico outpaced his lists in the congressional elections in March.
Tonight, Paloma gave a brief and sharply worded concession where she quickly endorsed Abelardo, saying that her top priority is to defeat Cepeda because “communism must never win in Colombia”. Uribe quickly followed with a video on social media taking responsibility for the party’s defeat and giving his endorsement to Abelardo for the same reason. Given the decades-long smear campaign by Cepeda against Uribe, it is no surprise. It is an early signal that opposition to Cepeda can unite the populist right and the conservative establishment behind the upstart Abelardo. Should most of her 1.6 million votes transfer to Abelardo in the runoff, it will more than double the margin Cepeda must overcome to surpass the top finisher’s result today.
The Fajardo Factor?
But can Cepeda pull in the votes of the fourth-place finisher? The short answer is probably no.
Fourth-place finisher Sergio Fajardo, the former mayor of Medellin, came in third place in many major cities throughout departments where Abelardo won. Fajardo won 4.25% and just over 1 million votes nationwide. However, this is not Fajardo’s first presidential run, and his brand is linked with rejecting extremes and casting blank votes as a statement without a better choice on the ballot.
The chances of Fajardo endorsing Abelardo or Cepeda are slim to none, and initial observations by political experts find it hard to picture his votes transferring to either in the runoff as well. They are likely to be mostly blank votes on June 21, and therefore not a factor in the outcome.
Abelardo’s rock show
Meanwhile, the last image of this evening’s events was a massive celebration for Abelardo’s supporters at the Gran Malecón in Barranquilla. Before a vibrant giant digital screen lighting up the outdoor venue, the optics recalled Argentine President Javier Milei’s 2023 victory event. But the vibe was far more from the barrios with its music and the style. Abelardo wore the yellow sports jersey of Colombia’s national soccer team and a matching baseball cap that have become a signature look of his insurgent campaign, and stood behind a thick bullet-proof shield as he gave a spirited victory speech leaning into nationalist pride.
“I am ready for the final battle on June 21!”, Abelardo shouted to an ebullient crowd as images of him with his hand over his heart flashed across the jumbo screen, mixing with cartoon tiger imagery. He vowed to ensure that the United States would be Colombia’s “number one ally in the world” and to ensure the country’s oil and gas industry would be strengthened in contrast to Petro’s promise to shut it down.
He praised Paloma Valencia as a “defender of democracy” and vowed to unite Colombia in pursuit “of its greatest glories”. He promised to take down the drug cartels, saying “silence is complicity”, and to “defend the rule of law” against the threat posed by Cepeda who he called “the narco-traffickers’ candidate”. He said the Colombian people “deserve a country that is safe for the good, and not captured by the criminals”.