Two weeks before the second round of the presidential election in Colombia, polls released this Sunday (5) show an advantage for populist Rodolfo Hernández over leftist Gustavo Petro, who won in the first round of voting.
The survey by the Centro Nacional de Consultoría, published by the newspaper El Tiempo, indicates a difference of just over three percentage points. The former mayor of Bucaramanga has 46.4% of the voting intentions, while the candidate of the progressive alliance Pacto Histórico has 43.3%. The margin of error is 2 points — which indicates that both opponents are in a technical tie scenario.
On the other hand, the survey aggregator of the website La Silla Vacía, which gathers data from surveys from ten Colombian institutes, points to a more comfortable victory for Hernández, with an advantage of 5 percentage points. The undecided amount to 6% of those interviewed, so the electoral balance can still tilt to either side.
Despite the indication of victory, Hernández had a mishap after spending a week negotiating the support of the third-placed candidate in the election, centrist Sergio Fajardo, who had 4% of the vote. This Sunday, the former mayor of Medellín ended talks with the populist candidate because he considered, according to a statement released, that Hernández “has not even evaluated” his proposals and “has not shown interest in reaching a programmatic agreement”.
As a result, the Centro Esperança Coalition, which had been launched at the beginning of the campaign, was split. Some members joined Petro’s candidacy, such as Alejandro Gaviria, former dean of the University of the Andes; others, like Ingrid Betancourt, came to support Hernández.
Thus, although he confirmed his favoritism in the first round, the polls of intention to vote add to the political articulations of recent weeks to show that the former guerrilla Petro is not guaranteed victory on the 19th, when Colombians will return to the polls. .
Petro is a former fighter of the M-19, an urban guerrilla that operated from 1970 to 1990, when it became a popular party (Aliança Democrática) that elected congressmen and helped draft the 1991 Constitution.
Much of Petro’s campaign was built on allegations that his candidacy acted as a brake on the traditional uribismo, a current led by the right-wing caudillo Álvaro Uribe. Now, however, his opponent sells himself as a political outsider —even though he already has a career in the public sector—, leading a strong anti-corruption speech.
A wealthy businessman in the construction sector, Hernández was mayor of Bucaramanga and comes from a poor background. He has already claimed to be an admirer of Adolf Hitler, to later apologize and say that he had, in fact, confused the Nazi dictator with the scientist Albert Einstein.
Populist, he mixes elements of the right and the left. Despite being against abortion and equal marriage, he is in favor of legalizing drugs; comes from the private sector and defends free trade, but at the same time indicates being protectionist with regard to the agro sector; also advocates increasing social spending with tax money, another leftist platform.
