Gustavo Petro was elected in Colombia with 3.13 percentage points more than populist Rodolfo Hernández, the smallest difference between finalists in the country’s presidential election in 28 years.
The voting map shows that polarization is also visible in different parts of the country: each candidate won in 17 departments, with Hernández concentrated in the interior and east of the country, and Petro in the coastal region, in the south and in the capital — where he got 50% more votes than his opponent.
In addition to Bogotá, the city of which he was mayor, Petro took three other big cities: Barranquilla, Cali and Cartagena. Hernández, on the other hand, triumphed in the second largest Colombian municipality, Medellín, with almost twice the votes of the elected, and in the city of which he was mayor, Bucaramanga, located in Santander, the region where he was born and the electoral stronghold of the populist – in this department, he reached almost 73% of the votes.
In Medellín and in the department of Antioquia, Hernández gained momentum when he was supported by candidate Frederico “Fico” Gutiérrez, who had won the first round in that part of the country on May 29.
Hernández was also the favorite candidate of the Colombian diaspora: more than 60% of the 300,000 citizens who voted in consulates outside the country chose his name, while only 37.2% chose Petro.
In the US, support for the populist reaches almost 80%. The 2,269 Colombians who went to the polls in consulates in Brazil elected Petro, with an advantage above the general average: 62.47%, against 35.96%.
