De la Espriella’s and Cepeda’s paths to Colombia’s presidential runoff run through abstainers

Abelardo de la Espriella’s unexpected victory over Iván Cepeda on Sunday, in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election, shows that right‑wing voters are now almost entirely united behind the penal lawyer, while left‑wing voters are fully consolidated behind the senator. The 653,000‑vote margin the far-right candidate held over the senator seems small in an election where 24 million people cast a vote and more than 3 million voted for other candidates. The challenge for the runoff would appear to be persuading those voters — but given the candidates’ profiles and recent history, the path necessarily also runs through the mobilization of people who did not go to the polls on Sunday.

That is how President Gustavo Petro has framed it. In a long midday post on X on Monday, he gave a figure: “Three million more votes are needed.” But he did not stop there, explaining that the focus should not be on voters who support other options but on abstainers, specifically young people. “To all young people I say, it’s time to go out and vote en masse like never before.”

That message comes from the knowledge and experience of someone with three decades of campaigning behind him, who sees abstentionists as the route to victory. A road that, according to the analyst Hernando Gómez Buendía in his column in Razón Pública, was the main strategy of the left’s campaign, but failed. “Cepeda’s secret weapon was massive participation from those at the bottom. The weapon didn’t fire,” the column reads.

Although it might seem initially simpler to target active voters — those who went to the polls on Sunday — it is not easy for campaigns to overcome the gap from that pool, and even less so for the left, where there is little to add. Cepeda’s campaign revolves precisely around progressive unity: two hopefuls from that sector, Carlos Caicedo and Luis Gilberto Murillo, withdrew in his favor in the final stretch of the campaign, and together added only 26,000 votes. There is no significant reserve on that flank.

Where more votes are available is on the right: De la Espriella can pick up much of Santiago Botero’s 206,000 votes — the candidate who promised to “shoot” those who take part in social protests and who positioned himself openly to the right of the penal lawyer. But the larger share — the 1.6 million voters of Uribista senator Paloma Valencia — is different. Although at first glance they might lean toward the far‑right candidate, Valencia campaigned on building a broad coalition, reaching out to centrist voters represented by her running mate, Juan Daniel Oviedo. With that platform she lost more than half of the 3.2 million people who supported her in an interparty primary in March, because at least some of Oviedo’s 1.6 million supporters defected. With a significant portion of the Uribista electorate already voting for the far right, the question is how many of those who still backed the senator are willing to move to the more radical candidate.

Then there remain the 1.2 million centrist voters. The roughly one million votes Sergio Fajardo received and the 225,000 for Claudia López are not contained within a structure with a leader able to direct them. López has spoken harshly against De la Espriella, but that does not guarantee her voters will turn to Cepeda: the center vote is, by definition, the hardest to capture with block logic. The former mayor can point her followers in a direction, but she cannot drag them along.

This is precisely where the key variable comes in: turnout. Four years ago, Gustavo Petro won the first round with 40% of the vote, but the combined votes of his right‑wing rivals — Rodolfo Hernández and Federico Gutiérrez — surpassed him by about 2.5 million votes. For the runoff, more people turned out and Petro beat Hernández after increasing his total from 8.5 million to 11.3 million votes. In the three weeks left before the runoff, Cepeda’s campaign is almost obliged to increase the turnout.

To that end, campaigns seek to generate more emotion. That is the horizon Petro has in mind as he urgently calls on his voters in a declamatory tone: “I know the weaknesses of the progressive campaign. I call on every democratic person to defend democracy against the death that is coming. A huge alliance for life, without exclusions.” The president, who by law is barred from participating in electoral politics, says he will lead the campaign: “No one here will surrender, we will win and I myself will take the lead.”

The other side has already begun to do the same. De la Espriella has said it is time to leave the left‑wing government behind, stoking the old fear among part of the country that Colombia could repeat the experience of Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. It is the narrative that has worked for the Colombian and Latin American right in similar elections: the runoff as a last bulwark, an irreversible decision. With it they seek not only to retain Valencia’s voters who are not enthusiastic about the penal lawyer, but also to motivate those who stayed home on Sunday, disenchanted with all the candidates.

Over the next three weeks, the two candidates will play on different boards but with the same urgency. Cepeda will try to expand his coalition toward the center and mobilize those who abstained on Sunday, appealing to the fear of someone they have repeatedly labeled “fascist” and to preserving the gains of the Petro government. De la Espriella will instead stoke fear of the left and work on persuading Valencia’s voters that their ideological differences with him are smaller than the risk of a new Pacto Histórico presidency. The result will depend on which of the two narratives reaches farther — and deeper — among Colombians who on Sunday chose other candidates or simply did not vote. In that universe of undecided citizens, moderates and abstainers lies the presidency.

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