The keys to Abelardo de la Espriella’s first-round victory in Colombia: anti-Petro and anti-politics sentiment

Abelardo de la Espriella surprised many with his first-round victory in Colombia with 44% of the vote. The leader in the polls had consistently been left-wing senator Iván Cepeda, with the far-right candidate appearing in second place. However, those polls showed Cepeda hovering around 40% of voter intention — and he received just that. They also reflected a significant rise for the far-right candidate in recent weeks, as well as a loss of appeal for traditional right-wing candidate Paloma Valencia. In those surveys the two of them together polled roughly between 35% and 40% of voting intention. In the end, De la Espriella reached 44% and Valencia managed only 6%.

De la Espriella’s vote total, however, is not entirely surprising. The combined strength of the entire Colombian right in the first round four years ago was 11 million votes, while tis time De la Espriella received 10.3 million votes out of a larger voter pool. That ability to concentrate the entire right-wing vote into a single candidacy, when four years ago it was split between two candidates in the first round, largely explains De la Espriella’s strong result. But the reasons do not stop there.

He also benefited from an increasingly polarized campaign, in part because of his own actions. But also thanks to Cepeda and, especially, to the person acted as his informal chief debater, President Gustavo Petro. A week before the vote, Cepeda referred to Uribismo — the dominant force on Colombia’s right for the past 25 years — as “fascist.” And although the Uribismo-backed candidate was Valencia, those words, as has become clear since in later statements by Cepeda and other members of his campaign, also targeted the candidate to the right of former president Álvaro Uribe. The rhetoric strengthened the far-right candidate because, amid intense polarization, Paloma Valencia chose to move toward the center: she added Juan Daniel Oviedo, an economist who is openly gay, as her vice-presidential running mate and built a message of bringing different groups together. That strategy blurred her profile for many right-wing voters.

Electoral maps reflect that impact. Traditional Uribismo strongholds became territories for De la Espriella rather than for Valencia: they remained areas dominated by the right, but it is no longer Uribe’s right — it is a more populist, more incendiary and more contemporary far right. It happened, for example, in Medellín, the country’s second largest city and where Uribe made his political career. In 2022 the Uribe-backed candidate, Federico Gutiérrez, won 603,000 votes and in the legislative elections his party, the Centro Democrático, secured 323,000; this Sunday Valencia had barely 102,000 votes while De la Espriella attracted 676,000. The same occurred in other important voting locations such as Cúcuta, on the Venezuelan border, and at consulates in the United States, where the figures were 100,000 in 2022 and 17,000 in 2026.

To capture the vote of the right, De la Espriella’s anti-political rhetoric — he repeatedly presents himself as an outsider representing “the never” against “the always” — had a very clear impact. Both Iván Cepeda’s Petrism and Paloma Valencia’s Uribismo are now seen as placing them within the traditional establishment, while the criminal lawyer says no political parties back him and that, as a millionaire businessman who has never held public office, he owes nothing to anyone. “I came to change politics forever,” he has promised repeatedly.

Added to this is another factor: these elections were in part a referendum on the first left-wing government in Colombia in decades. Four years ago, Gustavo Petro represented for some sectors the possibility of renewal reflected in his slogan, “the government of change.” For some Colombians who are not aligned with the left, he was nevertheless a beacon of hope. For many, that hope has now disappeared, as reflected, for example, in the shift among middle-class sectors in Bogotá who in 2022 largely voted for Petro and this time voted for De la Espriella.

One additional, significant factor is linked to the Caribbean region. De la Espriella, born on the Caribbean coast and with his main residence in the region’s largest city, Barranquilla, waved that flag during the campaign. “A coastal person votes for a coastal person,” as he told the influencer Westcol the night before the election. That region, a traditional bastion of votes opposed to the right, continued to vote mainly for Cepeda. Nevertheless, De la Espriella made inroads: in Barranquilla — where Petro won 51.9% of the first-round vote in 2022 — Cepeda this time received 47%; and whereas the two right-wing candidates together reached 41.8% in 2022, De la Espriella obtained 45.5%.

Layered on top of these structural and background factors is the far-right’s campaign strategy: he is a candidate who operates natively on social media, a showman who preferred to appear on popular, youth or comedy programs rather than face tough interviews with critical journalists. Cepeda, meanwhile, held 155 public square events aimed at leftist bases that did not expand his voter base.

All of this leaves, finally, a country more polarized than it has been in 20 years, in which no significant centrist alternative has emerged. That is, perhaps, the biggest factor in De la Espriella’s victory.

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