The far-right De la Espriella will be Colombia’s next president, according to preliminary vote count

Colombia on Sunday concluded the most closely contested election in its history and, according to the preliminary count, elected the far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella as its next president over the leftist Iván Cepeda. The preliminary tally gave the controversial criminal lawyer a razor-thin victory by less than one percentage point: with 99.97% of polling stations counted, De la Espriella obtained 49.66% of the vote versus Cepeda’s 48.7%, a difference of roughly 250,000 ballots. The leftist contender accepted the preliminary count but said he would not recognize the result until the final tally is completed, and he has challenged 33,000 (27%) of the 120,000 polling stations. In the same vein, President Gustavo Petro said that “neither one of them can proclaim themselves president.”

In the first round, the variation between the preliminary count and the final tally was 0.06%; in the runoff four years ago it was 0.11%; to overturn this Sunday’s result would require a change of 0.9%, which all but forecasts a likely victory for De la Espriella, who was congratulated by almost the entire political spectrum in Colombia (except the progressive camp) and by right-wing leaders in the Americas, led by Donald Trump.

By 11 p.m. local time, 87% of the polling stations had been counted; in other words, 17,000 of the 33,000 contested polling stations had already been verified by the vote-counting commissions. The results will not be announced until the entire process is complete.

If this projection holds, De la Espriella would take charge of the region’s fourth-largest economy, one of the few leftist strongholds that remained in Latin America. The narrow victory leaves De la Espriella in a bind. He had expected a wide margin that would signal a genuine ideological shift, but instead he will govern a country split nearly in half and without a clear mandate. The losing side has more room than expected to contest De la Espriella’s agenda, and the winner has much less support to impose the radical turn he promised. After the preliminary count ended, half of Colombia celebrated the victory in the streets while the other half held its breath.

The turnout of 63% was the highest since the 1998 runoff. Spoiled and blank ballots—about 676,000—more than double the margin between the two candidates. Such tight figures have starkly exposed a country deeply divided and polarized.

De la Espriella addressed Colombians in a video in which he spoke of a “message of unity,” but also of “absolute respect” for the vote of his more than 13 million supporters. In the city of Barranquilla, riding in a vehicle with an armored glass enclosure, he assured Cepeda’s supporters that he would respect their rights and freedoms: “You will never have to fear for thinking differently. My goal will be to earn your trust through results, not through speeches.” And he warned: “Let’s celebrate, but let’s stand up to those who seek to disregard the majority decision of the Colombian people.”

Speaking to his own supporters, Cepeda called for dialogue and described a divided country. “We are an indisputable force in Colombia,” he declared in his first appearance after the preliminary results were released. “We have not resorted to disguises,” he said. “We have not fallen into spectacle politics,” he added, referring to his austere campaign compared with De la Espriella’s. The candidate urged calm during the final tally but also issued a call: “We will not allow, using the power of democracy, the social gains we have built to be rolled back.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statements stood out among the international reactions, reiterating U.S. support for a candidate whom Trump had shown his “total endorsement” on up to three occasions in recent weeks. “The Trump Administration looks forward to working closely with your incoming administration to advance regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States, and strengthen our economic ties. Colombia’s best days are ahead,” wrote Rubio on X.

If De la Espriella’s victory is consolidated, Colombia will cease to be the exception it once was on the continent. The country that in 2022 elected the first leftist president in its modern history now joins a wave of radical right leaders governing Latin America, promising a tough approach, a break with the system, budget cuts and quick fixes. The same formula as Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador and Trump in the U.S.

The results for ‘El Tigre’, as De la Espriella calls himself, cannot be understood solely as part of a regional trend; they are inseparable from the vote of rejection against Gustavo Petro. The Colombian president is ending his term with high levels of popularity but also of disapproval. Significant sectors of the lower and middle classes that had voted for him have switched sides in this election, disillusioned with his government, while hostility from the elites had been growing. The president leaves four unresolved crises behind: the expansion of armed groups, the economic deficit, the collapse of the health system and corruption scandals.

De la Espriella has marketed himself as an outsider, but his victory inevitably depended on the usual power brokers. Despite his rhetoric of breaking with the establishment, he received backing from several traditional power clans that have ruled the regions for decades. As a running mate he chose José Manuel Restrepo—former finance and commerce minister under Iván Duque, a technocratic economist with three presidents in his family tree. His government team promises to bring a new elite to Bogotá, but it is not clear that it will be an anti-establishment one.

His nearly 13 million voters are a mix of traditional right-wing supporters, those disenchanted with the established political class, and those rejecting Petro and the left. The reservations he once provoked—even among the elites—dissipated in recent weeks, earning De la Espriella the sympathy of the country’s major business and financial figures. The preliminary results nevertheless show a Colombia far more divided than his campaign narrative assumed. More than half the country—counting Cepeda’s voters plus spoiled and blank ballots—does not want him.

De la Espriella’s great promise is the ‘miracle homeland’: a country of traditional values that opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. His mockery of LGBTQ+ people during the campaign has fed fears that his government could roll back rights that took decades to secure. He also warned he would “gut leftist people” if he came to power.

De la Espriella inherits a country difficult to govern, and does so without the mandate he expected. The first test will be security. He has pledged to bury ‘Total Peace’, Petro’s plan to negotiate simultaneously with all armed groups, and to deploy a 90-day “shock plan,” which, analysts say, makes it likely that guerrillas and dissident groups will not remain idle: armed strikes and attacks on barracks and infrastructure are to be expected, especially in the southwest, Catatumbo and the Pacific region.

His program worries jurists and activists. He has promised to build 10 maximum-security mega-prisons, magical formulas to restore security and the economy, and a military offensive against armed groups on a scale not seen since Álvaro Uribe’s governments. It is a strategy similar to the one that Uribe pursued between 2002 and 2010, which reduced violence but left a trail of false positives [executions of civilians by the military who falsely presented them as guerrillas] and human rights abuses.

One of the keys to his victory was precisely his campaign. Videos using artificial intelligence, bots, a network of influencers and billions of pesos in digital noise built a massive virtual presence. That was combined with a tour of public events in major cities where De la Espriella appeared alone, surrounded by a heavy security detail, amid fireworks and music, acting like a showman before thousands of supporters. The formula was the opposite of his main rival’s, who ran a sober, uneventful campaign until it was too late to change course.

His popularity overcame the multiple scandals accumulated during his years as a lawyer, which resurfaced during the campaign. It did not hurt him that he had defended paramilitary and narcotrafficking leaders. Nor the accusations from his own clients that he deceived them and took their money. Nor that he represented in criminal proceedings the billionaire Alex Saab, accused of being a frontman for Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and extradited by the Chavista government to the United States just weeks ago.

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