Colombia’s right pushes ‘gunpoint vote’ narrative, data contradict it

After two days of uncertainty, left-wing senator Iván Cepeda — who narrowly lost Colombia’s presidential election — accepted on Wednesday the victory of far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella. He did so in a public statement in which he pledged to act as “a democratic, vigilant and constructive opposition,” while noting that the margin between the two finalists had been “extraordinarily narrow,” at under 1% of the vote.

He also used part of his remarks to push back against a recent controversy. “I reject the irresponsible and dangerous claims that our voters are beholden to what has been called a ‘gunpoint vote,’” he said, arguing that such accusations are part of a smear campaign.

He was referring to a term that has been pushed by a segment of the right. Even before the preliminary vote count from the first round on May 31 had been completed, a table began circulating on social media showing results in municipalities with extreme risk from armed groups, linking them to Cepeda, the candidate from the Historic Pact coalition. Influencers backing De la Espriella claimed that Cepeda was winning precisely in areas where guerrilla presence was strongest.

After Sunday’s runoff, that disputed interpretation resurfaced. “The ‘gunpoint vote’ narrative that the far right is trying to promote ignores the fact that millions of Colombian men and women — nearly half of the electorate — have democratically supported our political project,” Aida Quilcué, Cepeda’s running mate, posted on social media.

“They found the ‘gunpoint vote’ narrative useful to make themselves appear electorally stronger,” replied one of the accounts promoting De la Espriella’s campaign.

Other politicians and right‑leaning figures echoed those claims, placing particular emphasis on rising turnout in certain areas. Those voices promote the idea that the three million additional votes Cepeda gained between the two rounds were, to some extent, the result of armed pressure, raising doubts without solid evidence.

“Abelardo de la Espriella’s recognition of the more than 12.6 million Colombians who voted for Iván Cepeda got off to a bad start,” retorted former interior minister Juan Fernando Cristo, who is part of the Alliance for Life that backed Cepeda. In a series of posts on social media, he sought to debunk that narrative — citing figures and polling-station data — to show that, in any case, these were precincts with very few voters.

“The ‘gunpoint vote’ narrative is false and dangerous. Are they not satisfied with their victory? Did they want to destroy those who do not share their views? Is that the message to millions of Colombians?” asked Cristo.

Looking at some of those polling stations, it might appear that the results are unusual, with very high shares for one candidate. But the E14 forms from those same polling stations four years ago, Cristo argues, show exactly the same pattern. “There is nothing extraordinary or sudden about it, but rather a historically strong vote for the Historic Pact in those areas,” he said.

He adds that voting patterns in Cauca and Nariño closely resemble those recorded there during the 2016 peace plebiscite. “What we are seeing are well‑established and consistent voting behaviours over time, not an anomaly that emerged out of nowhere,” said Cristo.

Moreover, there are also highly concentrated votes in favor of De la Espriella in areas affected by conflict or with a longstanding presence of armed groups — and this in itself does not prove coercion, fraud or corruption. For instance, he won in seven of the 11 municipalities in Catatumbo, a region with a strong National Liberation Army (ELN) presence and entrenched violence. “Polling stations with very low turnout almost always produce more concentrated results. Automatically turning that into proof of armed pressure is simply irresponsible,” Cristo said. “They won and still insist on pushing false narratives.”

Claudia López, the former mayor of Bogotá, agrees. She joined Cepeda’s campaign at the last minute and became well known for leading investigations into irregular voting patterns that later fed into the parapolítica scandal.

“That criminals have political preferences is obvious and dangerous, as many of us have denounced. But the claim that the ‘gunpoint vote’ was pro-Cepeda and decisive does not hold up in any rigorous statistical analysis,” said López. “What has been consistent since 2016 is the vote from poorer and border regions — demanding, almost crying out for, political, economic and social inclusion, rather than bullets and glyphosate, which has long been the right’s default response.”

“The debate foreshadows four years of deterioration in public discourse,” said Jorge Mantilla, a researcher specializing in armed conflict, describing how “the false idea is taking hold that three million people were forced to vote and that all of them did so for Cepeda.”

He criticizes, among other things, the reversal of the burden of proof. “It no longer matters to consider something ‘true’ beyond any reasonable doubt. What matters is to cast a veil of doubt over a complex and ambiguous reality. It works well in groups that identify as a ‘pack,’” he said, referring to the term De la Espriella — who calls himself El Tigre — often uses for his followers.

Some of the original posts about the “gunshot vote” pointed to charts by Michael Weintraub, director of the Center for the Study of Security and Drugs at the University of the Andes in Bogotá. Using sophisticated statistical models, he has analyzed how voting patterns in each municipality shifted between the first and second rounds of the Colombian presidential election. He cautions that such conclusions cannot be drawn and finds no evidence that armed groups boosted Cepeda’s vote

“The short answer is that, so far, that pressure does not appear in the results,” he tells EL PAÍS. “If I compare two municipalities with similar levels of poverty, rurality, distance from Bogotá and connectivity — and the only difference is that one has armed groups and the other does not — the vote moves in the same way. It does not tilt toward either De la Espriella or Cepeda, and it is not reflected in turnout either.”

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