04/06/2026

Between the revolution of the "nobodies" and the representation of the "nevers"

This is the narrative that has come to define the road to the runoff election.

Four years after the first left-wing government to reach the Casa de Nariño claimed to do so through “the revolution of the nobodies,” borrowing Eduardo Galeano’s words to describe those without a face or value in the eyes of the system, the candidate who had never before held public office emerged last Sunday in first place heading into the second round, declaring that he comes to “represent the nevers,” a reference to those excluded by the political establishment.

The first round of Colombia’s presidential election left behind one certainty and one paradox. The certainty is that the political system has been reduced to two major poles. The paradox is that neither of the candidates who will compete for the presidency managed to build a majority of their own. On the contrary, both Abelardo de la Espriella and Iván Cepeda enter the runoff supported by a combination of loyalties, rejections, and expectations that extend far beyond their original electoral bases.

With 43.74% of the vote for De la Espriella and 40.9% for Cepeda, the gap between them amounted to just 673,000 votes. Although the Defenders of the Homeland candidate prevailed in the first round, the margin is narrow enough to leave the outcome of the June 21 election wide open.

Yet the main conclusion of the first round is not who came in first. The real novelty is the disappearance of the political center as a competitive alternative. The results obtained by Sergio Fajardo, Claudia López, and even the Uribista candidate Paloma Valencia reflect a phenomenon visible across much of Latin America: the growing difficulty moderate positions face in surviving under conditions of intense polarization.

The Logic of Strategic Voting

The first round was dominated by a logic of strategic voting.

A significant portion of the Colombian electorate concluded that the real contest was between the government camp represented by Iván Cepeda and a candidate capable of defeating it. That perception ultimately benefited Abelardo de la Espriella.

The main casualty of this process was Paloma Valencia. The Democratic Center candidate attempted to build an alternative combining ideological firmness with institutional moderation. Her decision to bring Juan Daniel Oviedo onto the ticket as vice-presidential candidate was intended to broaden her appeal among urban and centrist sectors. Instead, it weakened her connection with the more hardline conservative electorate.

Many of those voters concluded that the priority was not to build a moderate right-wing option but rather to defeat Petrismo. As a result, they migrated toward De la Espriella, consolidating a phenomenon similar to that observed in other recent Latin American elections, where polarization has absorbed intermediate political expressions.

The paradox is that Uribismo retains political influence, territorial strength, and parliamentary presence, but no longer monopolizes the electoral representation of Colombia’s right. The emergence of De la Espriella is itself an expression of that transformation.

Two Colombias

The electoral map revealed the existence of two clearly differentiated political and social geographies.

Iván Cepeda consolidated his strength in Bogotá, the Pacific region, much of the Caribbean coast, and departments with significant Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and popular-sector populations. His victories in Cauca, Nariño, Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Putumayo, Amazonas, and Vaupés reflect the territorial continuity of the social coalition that brought Gustavo Petro to power.

De la Espriella dominated Antioquia, the Santander region, the Coffee Belt, the Eastern Plains, and much of the country’s center. These areas bring together business sectors, conservative middle classes, and voters concerned with security, economic growth, and the performance of the national government.

More than two candidates, the election appears to pit two different visions of Colombia against one another.

The first represents historically excluded sectors that found in the left a vehicle for political representation. The second expresses a Colombia that believes the promises of change failed to translate into material improvements and that demands order, stability, and growth.

Bogotá encapsulates much of this divide. Although Cepeda won the city, progressivism lost ground among urban middle-class sectors that had supported Petro in 2022. While the working-class neighborhoods of the south remained largely aligned with the Historic Pact candidate, wealthier districts clearly favored De la Espriella. Political analyst Ricardo Ruiz highlighted an interesting detail: Paloma Valencia prevailed in the city’s most affluent blocks, revealing a clear class bias in voting patterns.

The Vice-Presidential Factor

In such a close election, vice-presidential running mates acquire particular importance heading into the runoff.

In the first round, Iván Cepeda chose to consolidate his progressive core base through the selection of Aida Quilcué, an Indigenous leader, senator, and historic figure within social movements. In light of the results, the decision strengthened his ties with popular, Indigenous, and left-wing sectors. However, it leaves less room to send signals of moderation to centrist voters in the second round.

De la Espriella followed a different strategy. His running mate, José Manuel Restrepo, former Minister of Commerce and later Minister of Finance under Iván Duque, contributes administrative experience, economic credibility, and institutional predictability in contrast to the uncertainty his candidacy generates among establishment sectors. Beyond his academic credentials, Restrepo functions as a bridge to business, technocratic, and Uribista sectors that sympathize with De la Espriella’s message while also demanding economic stability.

The Abelardo Paradox

One of the most interesting aspects of the campaign has been the difficulty of ideologically categorizing Abelardo de la Espriella.

His current discourse clearly places him within Latin America’s emerging new right. He has adopted rhetoric similar to that used by Donald Trump, Javier Milei, and José Antonio Kast, even defining himself as a direct enemy of the left.

Yet his professional trajectory presents more complex nuances, earning him the nickname “the devil’s lawyer” in international media.

What made him a public figure was neither a political nor an academic career, but rather his willingness to take on cases that few lawyers were prepared to defend. He first gained notoriety as counsel for David Murcia Guzmán, the architect of the DMG pyramid scheme, considered one of the largest financial frauds in Colombian history. He later represented Alex Saab, the Venezuelan businessman identified by the United States as a financial operator for Nicolás Maduro’s government.

These precedents suggest that ideology has not historically been the primary driving force behind his professional activity. For precisely that reason, one of the most predictable lines of attack in Cepeda’s campaign will be to portray De la Espriella as a politically diffuse figure, more closely linked to the logic of power than to any consistent ideological conviction.

Colombia as a Continental Battleground

The runoff has ceased to be merely a Colombian contest.

Following the first-round results, Donald Trump publicly expressed his support for De la Espriella. Such interventions have become a common strategy for the U.S. president, who has already demonstrated his willingness to influence political processes in countries such as Argentina and Honduras.

He was subsequently joined by endorsements from Javier Milei, Nayib Bukele, and José Antonio Kast.

The significance of these endorsements lies less in their ability to alter Colombian voting behavior than in the political message they convey.

For part of the hemisphere’s emerging right, Colombia represents a strategic opportunity to consolidate a new regional political axis. On the other side, Latin American progressivism views the election as a referendum on the continuation of an agenda associated with Petro, Lula, and other center-left leaders.

Colombia has thus become one of the principal stages of Latin America’s ideological dispute, a struggle that may ultimately culminate in Brazil’s elections this coming October.

The Battle for the Absent

Yet the key to the runoff may not lie in alliances or international endorsements. It may lie in voter turnout.

Although the National Civil Registry described the election as a historic record, with participation reaching 57.2%, one particularly relevant fact is that several of the regions where Cepeda performed best recorded lower turnout levels than many of De la Espriella’s strongholds.

For this reason, the progressive candidate’s main challenge may not be persuading Fajardo’s or Claudia López’s voters, but mobilizing those who did not vote in the first round. In 2022, turnout increased from 54.91% in the first round to 58.17% in the second.

If the first round was defined by strategic voting, the second could become an election defined by participation.

The overlap with the FIFA World Cup introduces an additional and unprecedented variable. Election day will take place in the midst of the tournament, raising questions about whether this could affect voting behavior among certain social groups, particularly those with the economic means to travel abroad and support Colombia’s national team.

In an election that may ultimately be decided by only a few hundred thousand votes, even small variations in turnout could alter the final outcome.

More Fear Than Hope

There is one final element that distinguishes this runoff.

Neither Cepeda nor De la Espriella appears capable of making the defense of democratic institutions the central axis of their campaigns.

The governing coalition enters the election burdened by controversies surrounding proposals for a Constituent Assembly and by Gustavo Petro’s criticisms of the electoral system. The opposition, meanwhile, is organized around a candidate whose public profile has been shaped more by confrontation than by institutional advocacy.

As a result, the campaign appears headed toward a different dynamic: fear of Petrismo versus fear of fascism. Cepeda’s campaign portrays De la Espriella as a threat based on his statements supporting paramilitary actors and opposing abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

The decisive question no longer seems to be who inspires the most hope, but who succeeds in generating the greatest rejection of the opponent.

Paradoxically, the outcome may depend less on those who have already chosen between Cepeda and De la Espriella than on those Colombians who have not yet decided whether they will vote at all. If the first round was won by the candidate who managed to concentrate the strategic vote, the second may be decided by the one who succeeds in mobilizing the absent: the 17.5 million voters, largely from territories historically distant from power, who did not go to the polls on May 31.

Dolores Gandulfo is Secretary for International Relations and Integration of the Mercosur Parliament. She serves on the Latin American Advisory Council of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), the Network of Women Political Scientists, and the Argentine Association of International Relations Studies (AERIA). She is also a lecturer at the National University of San Martín, the National University of Tres de Febrero, and the University of Salvador.