The historic 2022 Colombian presidential elections (runoff analysis)
On June 19, Gustavo Petro was elected President of Colombia with 50.4% of the vote, concluding an historic election which will undoubtedly be remembered for years to come.
The results
Gustavo Petro, the candidate of the left-wing Pacto Histórico, was elected president with 50.4% of the votes, or 11.29 million votes.
His rival, populist outsider Rodolfo Hernández, won 47.3%, or 10.6 million votes.
The margin was 687,600 votes or 3.1%. This is the fourth closest election in recent Colombian history. However, it is still a clear and clean victory.
Blank votes are counted as valid votes in Colombia, and there were 500,000 blank votes (2.2%).
Turnout reached 58.2%, with 22.68 million votes cast (22.36 million of them valid). This is 3.2% higher than in the first round, three weeks ago, with 1.2 million more voters participating. This is one of the highest turnouts in a presidential election in recent Colombian history, only beat by the 1998 runoff and 1974.
Making history
Gustavo Petro is the first left-wing president in over 200 years of republican history in Colombia. This is a huge historical achievement, and an incredible victory for the left in a country which had long stood out as one of the least left-wing countries in Latin America.
There have been presidents with left-leaning agendas in the past, like Alfonso López Pumarejo’s Revolución en Marcha during his first term (1934–1938), but they were reformist ‘bourgeois’ liberals, not left-wingers.
Petro is a former member of the M-19 guerrilla, which he joined as a teenager in 1977. He was incarcerated for 18 months, and allegedly tortured under military custody. He demobilized in 1990 as part of the successful peace process with the eme guerrilla and, like many of his other companions, entered politics.
In a country which has suffered the longest and oldest armed conflict in the Americas, the election of a former guerrillero is a victory for peace and democracy. As Petro himself briefly mentioned in his victory speech, that somebody like him can become president is because of peace. Colombia is not at peace, and the conflict continues under different forms, but something in the national consciousness has changed so that being a former guerrillero is no longer an unsurmountable obstacle to winning power. Petro, of course, did not win because he was a former guerrillero — he won in spite of being a former guerrillero. But even that is still historic. Undoubtedly, the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, which at the very least led to the demobilization and disarmament of the oldest guerrilla in Latin America (dissidents notwithstanding), played a role in making this possible.
Reintegrated combatants, including former paramilitaries, are still stigmatized in society. According to the DANE’s 2021 political culture survey, 39% don’t want a former combatant as their neighbour (down 8.4% since 2019). Petro’s opponents have often attacked him by pejoratively calling him an exguerrillero or referring to his past in the M-19 — for example, right-wing Semana magazine’s front cover the day before the election had the title ¿Exguerrillero o ingeniero?(Former guerrillero or engineer?).
The mere fact that a left-wing opposition leader can finally come to power through peaceful, democratic means destroys any lingering justification for political violence. For decades, Colombia’s illiberal democracy excluded large swathes of society from effective political participation, pushing many Colombians, including Petro, to join the guerrillas. Political exclusion, among other things, was often used to justify the armed struggle, the idea that taking up arms against the state was the only way of effecting political change in Colombia.
There are several historical and structural causes for the left’s weakness in Colombia, but the armed conflict is perhaps the main one. For years, because of the conflict, the left was stigmatized and violently persecuted. The Unión Patriótica (UP), a left-wing party created as part of the first peace process with the FARC guerrilla in the 1980s, had effectively been exterminated by the late 1990s. Over a thousand party members, candidates and elected officials (including two presidential candidates) were murdered as part of a systematic terror campaign waged by drug traffickers, landowners, paramilitary groups, sectors of the military and intelligence community, with the implicit or explicit support of many politicians and the state apparatus. The genocide of the UP is documented in the 2003 documentary Baile rojo. As a form of reparation, the UP was revived as a political party by the Council of State in 2013 and is now part of the Pacto.
The road to power for the Colombian left has been long, tortuous and bloody.
Gustavo Petro is not the only one who made history on June 19. Vice President-elect Francia Márquez also made history as the first Afro-Colombian vice president (and second woman vice president, after outgoing VP Marta Lucía Ramírez). She too represents traditionally marginalized groups in society, most notably Colombia’s large Afro-Colombian minority, the third largest Afro-descendant population in Latin America after Brazil and Haiti (estimated at 4.6 million, or 9.3% of the population, by the DANE). Afro-Colombians still face structural racism, discrimination and major social inequalities. In 2021, according to the DANE, 46% of Afro-Colombians and 61.6% of indigenous peoples lived in monetary poverty, compared to 39% of the general population.
Francia Márquez really does not fit the traditional profile of a Colombian politician: she is a single mother, an Afro-Colombian woman from Suárez (Cauca) who worked as a domestic worker in Cali and pushed herself through law school (obtaining her degree in 2020). She gained notoriety as a local environmental leader who opposed the forced eviction of her community for a mining concession to a multinational corporation and illegal mining in her region. She received death threats and was forced to flee her home with her children in 2014, making her a victim of forced displacement like millions of other Colombians. She doesn’t speak or behave like a politician (unlike Petro), and has said that she never asked to be in politics but that politics messed with her.
Francia Márquez speaks to the nadies (the nobodies): all those who have been marginalized and excluded, all those who don’t feel represented in politics, all those who have suffered from violence and poverty in silence and all those who have been forgotten by the state.
As an aside, Márquez is the first black vice president, but Colombia briefly had a black president for a few months in 1861: Juan José Nieto Gil, whose very brief tenure was erased from history and only recognized in 2018.
Finally, Petro’s election is a victory for democracy. Colombian democracy is imperfect and has a lot of problems, and this campaign revealed them. In spite of the problems with the electoral system, thanks to the preconteo system, 95% of votes had been counted within an hour after polls closed and the winner’s name was quite clear within 35–40 minutes. Many had been preparing for the worst: an extremely close election, ‘massive’ fraud, the loser not admitting defeat, a protracted process (like in the 2000 or 2020 US elections), protests against the outcome… None of that happened.
The loser quickly conceded defeat. In the following days, as some of his more radical and embittered supporters made up claims of fraud and vote rigging (without any kind of serious evidence), Rodolfo refused to question the legitimacy of the result and again reiterated that Petro had won.
Former President Álvaro Uribe, one of Petro’s biggest opponents, was also quick to recognize Petro’s victory, saying that “to defend democracy, it is necessary to abide by it”. On June 29, Petro met with Álvaro Uribe, an historic meeting between two political rivals which was unimaginable just weeks ago.
President Iván Duque, who breached the neutrality of his office by incessantly interfering in the campaign to criticize Petro, also recognized Petro’s victory and has worked to ensure a relatively smooth transition. On that note, Petro owes a lot to Iván Duque: he probably wouldn’t have won without the unintended ‘help’ of Duque’s extremely unpopular administration since 2018…
A victory that defied expectations
Gustavo Petro’s victory was not a complete surprise. Going into June 19, and judging by the last polls from a week before, nobody was really sure who would win and most agreed that the election would be very tight (yours truly included). The polls varied, but four of the seven pollsters had the election within the margin of error (though all had Rodolfo leading).
However, on the evening of the first round (May 29), most observers felt that Rodolfo Hernández was the favourite in the runoff given that he had more vote reserves than Petro — most notably, right-wing candidate Fico Gutiérrez’s 5 million votes. As I wrote in my runoff preview, the numbers and fundamentals favoured Rodolfo and Petro had a much harder path to victory considering just the hard numbers.
However, the election results defied expectations and showed us that, in politics, numbers don’t mean everything and that 2+2 isn’t equal to 4.
Gustavo Petro, despite apparently having ‘no vote reserves’ or ostensibly having hit a ceiling at 8.5 million votes on May 29, won 2.7 million more votes!
After the first round, to put a positive spin on what looked like a tough uphill battle, Petro’s campaign said that they needed just another 1.5 million votes. They guessed that runoff turnout would be a bit lower (like in 2018), around 20 million, and that they would need just 10 million votes to win. For once, a campaign’s spin was too pessimistic!
Since 2018, a lot of people have prematurely said that Petro had hit his ceiling: the 2018 primaries, the 2018 presidential election, the 2022 Pacto primary, the first round…
Rodolfo Hernández won 10.6 million votes, which is quite something on its own, but he won about 400,000 fewer votes than the 11 million votes that he and Fico had won on May 29. The quick sum of 6 million and 5 million from May 29 didn’t add up to 11 million…
So, even when it was difficult for him to grow more, Petro gained 2.7 million votes in three weeks and went from 40.3% to 50.4% — gaining 10 percentage points.
Petro had very few obvious vote reserves from the first round: Fico’s voters were anti-petristas and right-wingers who weren’t about to vote for Petro (after Fico had positioned himself as the anti-Petro candidate for months), Fajardo had just 885,000 votes and it was unclear how many would be amenable to voting for Petro (and, in any case, insufficient) and the minor right-wing candidates John Milton Rodríguez (271,000 votes) and Enrique Gómez (48,600 votes) both endorsed Rodolfo.
In my runoff analysis, I said that Petro had two complementary paths to victory: motivating non-voters to vote in the runoff for him, particularly in the Caribbean where turnout on May 29 was low but where Petro was strong (the ‘Santos 2014’ strategy), and keeping as many Fico and Fajardo voters from voting for Rodolfo. I also thought that both were difficult strategies, particularly the first one.
However, both strategies were successful.
Turnout increases: Petro mobilizes new voters
Turnout increased by 1.2 million votes, from 21.4 million to 22.6 million (or 55% to 58.2%). Turnout increased in the right places for Petro: the Caribbean and the Pacific, his two strongholds.
Turnout increased by 9.6% in Nariño, 9.4% in Cauca and 6.5% in Chocó on the Pacific coast, even if turnout in the first round had already been relatively high in those departments. In the Caribbean, turnout increased by 7.8% in Córdoba, 7% in La Guajira, 6.4% in Atlántico, 6.3% in Sucre, 5.3% in Bolívar, 4.6% in Cesar, 4.3% in Magdalena and 3.5% in San Andrés.
On the other hand, turnout didn’t increase by as much where Rodolfo (and Fico) were strongest. In Antioquia, turnout only increased by 0.4% and it actually dropped in most of the Medellín metropolitan area. In the Eje Cafetero departments, where Fico had done relatively well, turnout increased by less than 1% in Risaralda and Quindío and by just over 1% in Caldas. In Santander, where turnout had already been very high in the first round (66%), it only increased by 1.5%.
The map below shows turnout increases from the first round at the municipal level:
Compared to the 2018 election, which had a decently high turnout already (54%), turnout increased in the vast majority of municipalities. However, there were big turnout increases (at least +7%) in the Pacific (Petro’s stronghold), Santander (Rodolfo’s stronghold) and in an area roughly corresponding to the old zona de distensión in Caquetá and Meta.
It is clear from the results that increased turnout greatly favoured Petro, and we can reasonably surmise that most new voters supported Petro by a rather substantial margin.
Petro was able to mobilize a large number of non-voters, including, perhaps, some people who had never voted in a presidential election in their lives (not just young voters).
The maps below show the growth rate in Petro’s total votes between the two rounds (left) and the increase in his vote share (right). He gained 702,000 votes in the Caribbean, 583,000 votes in the Pacific, 484,000 votes in Bogotá and 396,300 in Antioquia and the Eje Cafetero. Petro gained votes and increased his vote share in every single department, and in nearly every single municipality.
In Atlántico, for example, Petro’s vote grew by 41.9% (from 474,000 to 673,000) and his vote share increased by 12.3% (from 54.8% to 67.1%). In Bogotá, although turnout didn’t increase by much, his vote share still rose by 11.5% to 58.6%. Likewise, in the Eje Cafetero and Antioquia, even if turnout stayed flat, Petro still improved both his votes and percentages quite nicely (+8.8% in Antioquia).
Petro was able to mobilize a large number of new voters because he had the strongest campaign infrastructure on the ground: volunteers, supporters, machines and political surrogates who all worked double time for him. In Bogotá, for example, the Pacto Histórico’s many incoming senators and representatives each canvassed specific parts of the city. Across the country, his campaign organized a strong GOTV effort and managed election day logistics.
In the Caribbean, some have attributed Petro’s gains to the support of some political machines, including some led by convicted parapolíticos or corrupt bosses: the Torres clan and Eduardo Pulgar (Atlántico), the Montes clan (Bolívar), Mario Fernández (Sucre), Zulema Jattin (Córdoba) and the infamous Ñoños in Córdoba.
As explained in a great article in La Silla Vacía, Petro’s triumph in the Caribbean owed a lot to his campaign working to provide transportation to their voters — a key logistical element in GOTV efforts in Colombia, where access to voting locations (especially in rural areas) is costly and very challenging. Machine support helped a bit, as they were ‘partially activated’, but a lot is also the result of campaign volunteers organizing transportation for voters and supporters chipping in and helping out in any way they could.
5+6 isn’t equal to 11: Rodolfo falls short of his potential
For reasons not entirely of his own doing, Petro was also able to keep a number of Fico voters from voting for Rodolfo. Rodolfo Hernández’s 10.6 million votes is still impressive, but it fell 400,000 votes short of the 11 million votes that he and Fico had won in the first round (and 720,000 votes short of the votes for him and all right-wing candidates). This means that Rodolfo either lost some Fico voters or lost some of his own first round voters.
The maps below show the growth rate in Rodolfo’s runoff vote compared to the total votes for Fico and him in the first round (left) and his runoff vote share compared to the combined Fico/Rodolfo vote share on May 29 (right). In percentage terms, Rodolfo only beat his ‘potential’ among expats and the sparsely populated departments of Vichada and Guainía.
The two pairs of maps make clear that increased turnout greatly benefited Petro nearly everywhere, most strikingly in the Caribbean and the Pacific. In these two petrista regions, Rodolfo really struggled to match his ‘potential’ (i.e. the combined Rodolfo and Fico votes from May 29).
In Atlántico, Fico and Rodolfo had won nearly 40% in the first round but Rodolfo won only 31.4%. Same story in Magdalena (-7%), Bolívar (-6.3%), Sucre (-5.3%) and, on the Pacific coast, in Nariño (-7%).
It may be because some of Fico’s support in those regions, like charista Atlántico, came from the machines that had supported him in the first round, who did not actively ‘move’ for Rodolfo in the runoff (most likely supported him but not actively).
In Antioquia, where Fico won 48.9% (1.38 million votes) in the first round against 18.4% (521,000 votes) for Rodolfo, Rodolfo won 64.1% in the runoff or 1.83 million votes: about 79,000 votes or 3.2% short of his baseline potential.
The map at the local level of the growth rate in Rodolfo’s votes compared to the ‘right’ on May 29 suggests that Rodolfo failed to match his ‘potential’ in nearly every major city except for very anti-petrista Cúcuta. However, he did match or exceed his potential in rural areas, including rural Antioquia and Santander, the Caribbean savannahs and the Momposina depression — but this could be due in part to higher turnout. In general, Rodolfo failed to meet his potential in nearly every single municipality, as this graph shows (the only notable exception being Cúcuta).
Comparing Rodolfo’s runoff performance only to his own first round performance, obviously he gained nearly everywhere, most notably in Antioquia. However, the map does show that he had some difficulties in retaining his own first round vote in its entirety, where he had much more limited room to grow after massive first round numbers (Santander, parts of Cundinamarca) but also in Nariño, Cauca, Caquetá and Putumayo.
In Bogotá, local results show that Rodolfo was able to exceed his potential in wealthy Usaquén and Chapinero, the two localities in northern Bogotá which Fico won in the first round, but he really struggled to match his potential in the poorer areas in the south of the city. For example, in low-income Usme, Bosa and Ciudad Bolívar he fell nearly 7% short of his ‘potential’ vote. At least in Bogotá, Rodolfo didn’t have much trouble in winning affluent conservative voters who had supported Fico in big numbers on May 29 (although turnout in northern Bogotá dropped a tiny bit), but probably had more trouble in holding his own lower-income voters in the south (the petrista stronghold in the capital).
In the absence of hard data (or even proper exit polling), we cannot conclusively state how many of Fico’s voters went to Rodolfo or how many of his own first round voters Rodolfo lost. However, it is clear that not all of Fico’s voters supported Rodolfo in the second round, although the vast majority of them did. Those who didn’t likely did not vote at all, or cast a blank vote (the blank vote ‘flopped’ again but did increase by about 134,000 since May 29). It is unlikely that a significant number of Fico (or other right-wing) voters voted for Petro. On the other hand, Rodolfo also lost some of his own first round voters.
What went wrong? Rodolfo’s bad campaign
Even though he lost, we shouldn’t be quick to forget that Rodolfo Hernández’s result was also quite impressive. His first round success was incredible, as I wrote before. In defeat, his runoff result is quite good. With 10.6 million votes, he won about 4.6 million more votes than three weeks ago — although a lot of those votes were likely more votes against Petro than for Rodolfo. With 10.6 million votes, he also won more votes than Iván Duque won four years ago in the runoff (10.4 million).
Rodolfo Hernández has obviously rewritten the playbook about how to do well in Colombian elections (perhaps not the ‘winning’ part yet). He’s a man who isn’t a career politician, wasn’t backed by any machine or political leader, barely had a tangible campaign infrastructure outside of WhatsApp groups, only rarely held political rallies and didn’t spend a lot of money on his campaign. He became a political phenomenon when nobody took him seriously or expected him to do as well as he did. He built a spontaneous, organic base of supporters largely thanks to social media and organized them through ‘multi-level’ WhatsApp groups. In the first round, he defeated a candidate (Fico) who was supported by the vast majority of Colombia’s traditional political clans and their powerful machines.
All that being said, after a successful first round campaign, Rodolfo’s second round campaign was bad.
Before the first round, all the scrutiny and spotlights had been focused on Petro for months, while Rodolfo got a free ride and his own scandals, controversies, gaffes, mistakes or outlandish ideas were ignored or brushed off as the funny antics of a crazy old man. In the runoff, however, Rodolfo was forced to be on the defensive, putting out fires and constantly doing damage control for past controversies and gaffes which were suddenly looked at more seriously (the old admiring Hitler ‘lapsus’, not knowing where Vichada was, his remarks about women, his corruption scandal, the Virgin Mary prostitute comment). On the defensive, he clearly become much more irascible.
After he chided Radio Nacional journalists for their “stupid questions”, he stopped giving interviews, even refusing easy softball interviews like on Tropicana Radio (very much non-political). He refused to attend any debate. In the final days before the election, when a court ordered the organization of a debate, Rodolfo basically did all that he could to avoid being forced into a debate. At first by presenting a rather ridiculous set of maximalist preconditions and, when Petro called his bluff, running out the clock to finally read out a message disingenuously blaming Petro for the lack of a debate. Many agreed that the late debate kerfuffle was a big mistake by Rodolfo which hurt him at the worst moment.
Avoiding interviews and debate really made it look as if Rodolfo was deliberately dodging tough questions, reinforcing the perception that he was inexperienced, unprepared and unknowledgeable about policy issues.
The combination of Rodolfo’s controversies and gaffes and Rodolfo running away from interviews and debates made it easy for the Petro campaign to attack him as a machista and a dangerous and irresponsible populist. For example, the Petro campaign seized on his comments about women (that women should ideally stay at home, or that a wife should support her husband from home) to paint him as a machista, in an effort to close an apparent gender gap in the first round. In the absence of hard data, it is impossible to know how women voted in either round, but pre-election polls generally showed that Petro had successfully closed the gender gap with Rodolfo.
Rodolfo Hernández doesn’t like campaigning much. However, a late campaign tour before the first round likely helped boost his positive momentum. In the runoff, Rodolfo barely campaigned in Colombia: he went to Vichada, an obviously symbolic choice but also a very useless one (he was going to win Vichada regardless, and it cast just 19,600 votes…). He then spent a disproportionate amount of time in the runoff in Miami. Florida certainly has a large and politically active ultra-conservative/far-right Colombian expatriate population, but campaigning there is useless: Rodolfo was going to win Miami regardless. Upon his return to Colombia, he spent time at his country house in Piedecuesta, where he met with young influencers and caused more controversy because of a TikTok video where he’s seen walking around shirtless in shorts with two young women.
With the candidate unwilling to actively campaign himself, his campaign therefore relied on their online grassroots base (the WhatsApp and Facebook groups) to find votes. According to La Silla Vacía’s article on the rodolfista network, the campaign hoped that each member (on WhatsApp, Facebook etc.) would find 10 additional voters. While this very unconventional digital strategy was clearly successful in the first round, the runoff showed the limits of this digital strategy, when not combined with actual groundwork by political structures. While the Petro campaign organized themselves, sometimes with the help of other machines or through the coordination of their new ‘army’ of elected officials, and effectively managed the logistics of election day operations (like providing transportation), the Rodolfo campaign didn’t have as many people organizing GOTV efforts.
Whereas his first round campaign had been rather upbeat, his runoff campaign turned much more negative. He turned to the right’s old fear tactics against Petro — castrochavismo, the Venezuela boogeyman and all. Those tactics were effective in 2018, but they’ve gotten gradually less effective with time, and not only in Colombia (the castrochavismo rhetoric has got to be one of Colombia’s top political exports!). In the first round, his anti-establishment and anti-corruption populism appealed to a broad audience, not necessarily just right-wingers (although already in his first round most of his voters were conservative). By going more negative and rehashing the old right-wing playbook against Petro, he may have turned off some of his own voters who voted for his apolitical message of ‘change’ in the first round. Most famously, this was the case of Green senator-elect (and YouTube influencer) Jota Pe Hernández, who dis-endorsed Rodolfo just two days after the first round because he didn’t want to be in the same boat as uribismo.
To win the election, Rodolfo needed to hold his first round electorate and win the vast majority of Fico’s right-wing voters. As I said, he fell short of his potential: not all of Fico’s voters supported him, and not all of his own first round voters stuck with him. In the runoff campaign, Rodolfo faced a tough dilemma: attracting the right-wing and uribista vote, without losing his own voters who might balk at the sight of uribismo in the campaign. Rodolfo might have a fundamentally conservative mindset as a businessman, but he’s no conservative ideologue and not all of his political ideas are conservative. Yet, in the runoff against Petro and with the ‘traditional’ right in shambles (after Fico’s defeat and uribismo’s inglorious collapse), Rodolfo became the new de facto leader of the Colombian right.
Rodolfo chose to mark his differences with uribismo. He listed his ‘20 differences’ with uribismo in a Twitter thread and continued criticizing uribismo and Álvaro Uribe. This was a strategic choice to avoid being branded as the uribista Plan C by Petro, and he calculated that uribistas would have no choice but to vote for him in the end to defeat Petro. While he was giving uribismo the cold shoulder, Rodolfo (in the first week) briefly negotiated a possible alliance with Sergio Fajardo’s centre. Rodolfo ended up abruptly cutting off the discussions with Fajardo, but not before many right-wingers had criticized him for going out of his way to get the endorsement of a candidate who had won all of 4%.
While the majority of uribistas still voted for Rodolfo, some of them likely decided to stay home after he ‘snubbed’ uribismo. Evidence of this can be seen in Antioquia and the Eje Cafetero, old uribista strongholds, where turnout barely increased in the runoff. In addition, some (but not many) likely voted blank: the blank vote was slightly above average in Antioquia (3%), Caldas (3.2%), Risaralda (2.8%) and Quindío (3%).
In short, in the runoff Rodolfo lost the initiative and made several strategic mistakes that ended up costing him crucial votes.
The road to victory: Petro’s runoff campaign
After the first round results, Petro and his campaign were obviously rattled and anxious. He had done quite well for himself in the first round (8.5 million votes, 40.3%) but, as I wrote, this victory had a very bitter taste.
They had fallen a bit short of their unreasonably high expectations (45–47% or a first round victory). Most importantly, they hadn’t seen Rodolfo coming and they weren’t ready for that runoff matchup. They had been preparing for months for a Fico/Petro runoff, which had seemed inevitable since March 13, and their strategy was written for that runoff. Against Rodolfo, however, Petro was suddenly no longer the clear favourite (which he had been for months), and Rodolfo had kind of usurped the anti-establishment and anti-system rhetoric from Petro.
After the cold shower of the first round a few days of reckoning and trying out different strategies, Petro’s campaign found their bearings.
On the one hand, Petro was redefined as the responsible, democratic statesman who offered cautious and responsible change, respectful of the institutions and legality. Rodolfo’s gaffes and his mistakes (notably the debate nonsense) unwittingly reinforced the image of Petro as the responsible statesman.
In the final stretch of the campaign, Petro drove home the message that he was the statesman whose time had come. On June 14, he shared a finely tuned 15 minute ‘message to the nation’, which was both an appeal for his vision of change and an attempt to allay fears about him. In his message, Petro pledged to govern with absolute respect for the constitution and the laws, respect private property and not to seek reelection. It is unclear if this video had a positive impact but it was widely shared on social media.
On the other hand, the campaign worked to ‘humanize’ Petro. After drawing huge crowds to his public rallies around the country for months (like the charismatic political leaders of the past), Petro got off the stage. He was seen playing football, spending the night with a fisherman in Honda (Tolima), cooking patacones with a single mother in Quibdó and picking coffee in Caldas. Gustavo Petro is not a very warm or friendly person and he has trouble establishing an emotional connection with people and working in a team. He is described as timid, but also calm and fearless in difficult moments. His critics have considered him to be arrogant, pretentious and narcissistic. His 2022 campaign worked hard to humanize him and make him appear closer to the people — friendlier, more humble, willing to listen to others and conciliatory.
Of course, the campaign was hit from June 8 by the Petrovideos, leaked video recordings of campaign strategy meetings, featuring some revelations about the campaign’s dirty campaigning (contradicting Petro’s ‘politics of love’), tricks and strategies. Petro himself, however, barely says anything in any of the videos. Instead, the main actor in all of them is senator Roy Barreras, Petro’s new ruthless political operator from the world of old politics.
What impact did the Petrovideos have on the campaign? In a podcast interview, Armando Benedetti — another of Petro’s new allies from the old world — said that the videos halted Petro’s positive momentum but he didn’t lose ground. He believes that people saw the videos as the usual nastiness we’ve all come to expect from politics, but since Petro didn’t really speak much in any of them or say anything scandalous, the impact was muted.
The fact that the Petrovideos were mostly released by Semana may also have reduced the potential impact. The magazine has lost a lot of credibility and respect since it moved to the right and and replaced quality journalism with clickbait, sensationalism, thinly-veiled editorializing and yellow journalism (see my runoff preview post). It has become the favoured target of left-wing jeering and mockery on social media, and its coverage has been criticized by a lot of journalists and more neutral observers for its obvious right-wing political bias. It didn’t help its case with its front cover the day before the election, titled ¿Exguerrillero o ingeniero?.
On the other side, if he had anything to gain from the Petrovideos, Rodolfo clearly blew it with his melodramatic response. From Miami, he hyperbolically claimed that the Pacto was a criminal gang and that his life was at risk, implying that he would be stabbed. He cancelled all public events until the election and initially said that he wouldn’t return to Colombia, before changing his mind a few hours later. When he could have been pointing out the hypocrisy and contradictions of Petro’s campaign, he instead went for silly theatrics and outlandish claims. In any case, the debate kerfuffle a few days later kind of overshadowed the Petrovideos.
Two Colombias
The map of the runoff, like the first round, painted a clear picture of a regionally divided and polarized country. Gustavo Petro swept the two coasts, the Caribbean and the Pacific, and dominated in Bogotá with 58.6%. In other words, he won the periphery as well as the political centre. He dominated with around 80% of the vote in places like Chocó, Nariño, Cauca and Putumayo.
Rodolfo Hernández dominated much of the central Andean region (including his native Santander), Antioquia, the Eje Cafetero and much of the Llanos Orientales. He won 77.9% in Norte de Santander on the Venezuelan border, his best result, and 73% in his native department of Santander. He also won 70.4% in Casanare, traditionally the most uribista department in Colombia. In Antioquia, he won 64.1%.
The map by municipality, shaded according to the winner’s percentage of the vote, offers a more detailed and quite striking look at the geographic/regional polarization in this election.
The margins were quite lopsided in many places. In 18 departments, the winner won over 60% of the vote. In another 7 departments, the winner received over 55% of the vote. Only 7 departments were won by less than 10%, and only one department (Risaralda) was won by less than 6%.
In sum, the election painted a picture of two Colombias. In his victory speech, Petro said that he wants there to be only one Colombia. One of his main challenges will be reconciling the different visions of change expressed by these two Colombias in May and June.
Indeed, the ‘two Colombias’ are not new. The two ‘countries’ have evolved over time, but the broad regional divisions have remained quite similar since at least 2014. This year’s map is similar in many aspects to that of the 2014 and 2018 presidential elections, as well as the 2016 plebiscite on the peace agreement.
An article in El País comparing this year’s results to 2018, 2016 and 2014 found that Rodolfo and Fico’s first round vote (together) was correlated with Iván Duque’s support in 2018, the No in 2016 and uribista candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga’s support in 2014. Conversely, Petro and Fajardo’s first round in 2022 is correlated with Petro’s 2018 vote, the Yes in 2016 and Juan Manuel Santos’ vote in 2014.
The coalitions have shifted since then, notably with uribismo no longer being the central force in the balance and some issues like the peace process no longer being top of mind in 2022 (unlike in the three previous votes). However, the issues, values and demographic bases of the main sides haven’t changed too much.
Rodolfo inherited much of the conservative and (ex-)uribista vote in the Andean regions and the Llanos. This doesn’t mean that Rodolfo is an uribista, but it does mean that a lot of people who had supported uribismo in the past supported Rodolfo by the first round in 2022. After four years of a very unpopular (and largely incompetent) uribista government, it’s probably fair to say that there are a lot of disgruntled, disabused or disillusioned uribistas thirsty for ‘change’, but not Petro’s left-wing version of change. Furthermore, Rodolfo’s conservative, paternalistic, entrepreneurial, business-like and somewhat authoritarian mindset and temperament is a good fit for this conservative ‘country’. A ‘country’ which is also thirsty for change, but apprehensive and anxious about Petro’s version of change.
Of course, in the runoff, a good number of Rodolfo’s votes were against Petro more than they were for him.
Petro attracted, like in 2018, a more left-leaning and ethnically diverse electorate in several big cities and peripheral regions, which had been anti-uribista before voting for Petro or Fajardo in 2018.
In most cities, Petro did best with young voters and the urban poor and working-class. In the runoff, Petro won Bogotá, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Valledupar, Montería, Pasto, Neiva, Popayán, Sincelejo, Riohacha, Ipiales, Quibdó, Soacha, Soledad, Palmira, Mocoa, Buenaventura, Tunja, Duitama, Sogamoso and Tuluá (among others). While he lost in Ibagué, Manizales, Pereira and Armenia, he did better in those cities than in their departments as a whole (and surrounding rural areas). In conservative Medellín, he won 34%, compared to just 21.7% in 2018.
Rodolfo Hernández won in Medellín, Bucaramanga, Cúcuta (with 81%), Manizales, Pereira, Armenia, Ibagué, Villavicencio, Florencia, Yopal, Bello, Envigado and Itagüí.
Petro won the ‘peripheral’ regions which are poorer, continue to be severely affected by violence and the conflict, and which have too often been forgotten, abandoned or overlooked by the central government. According to the MOE, Petro won 54% of the vote in the 375 municipalities with some level of risk for violence (as defined by the MOE, see here) while Rodolfo won with 56.5% in all other municipalities with no risk for violence. Also according to the MOE’s analysis, Petro won nearly 57% in the poorest municipalities (highest unsatisfied basic needs). In these peripheral regions, Francia Márquez’s appeals to the nadies and the general feeling of being invisible or forgotten were undoubtedly quite powerful.
In addition, regionalism also played a role. Gustavo Petro was born in Ciénaga de Oro (Córdoba), and although he grew up in Zipaquirá (Cundinamarca), he still plays on his costeño origins and benefits somewhat from a regional favourite son vote. Until Petro, there hadn’t been a president from the Caribbean since Rafael Núñez, who died in office in 1894. Regionalism played in Rodolfo’s favour in his native Santander, which hasn’t had a local son as president since Aquileo Parra (1876–1878).
The Caribbean, as previously explained, was crucial to Petro’s victory. He gained 700,000 votes in the region compared to the first round, thanks to higher turnout and the successful mobilization of his electorate. It was also crucial because Petro soundly beat Rodolfo by about 1 million votes (or 25%) in the Caribbean, whereas in 2018 it had been essentially tied between Petro and Duque in the runoff.
In the Caribbean, Petro did best in the cities. He won in Cartagena (with 67.5%), Barranquilla (64%), Santa Marta (63%), Valledupar (58%), Montería (57.7%), Sincelejo (68%) and Riohacha (65%). He also won other large cities and towns like Soledad (77%), Malambo (79%), Turbaco (68%), Magangué (69%), Lorica (65.9%), Sahagún (65.8%) and Maicao (62.5%). In his birthplace, Ciénaga de Oro (Córdoba), he won 73%. Rodolfo won southern Cesar (which has close cultural and socioeconomic ties with Santander), southern Bolívar, the Caribbean savannahs and parts of the Momposina depression.
As in the first round, Petro did exceptionally well (even better than in 2018) among Afro-Colombian and indigenous voters, in part thanks to Francia Márquez. His best department was Chocó (82.1%), one of the poorest departments in Colombia, which is around 75% black and 15% indigenous. Two of his other best departments, Nariño (81%) and Cauca (79.2%), also have large black and indigenous populations.
In heavily Afro-Colombian municipalities along the Pacific coastline, Petro won upwards of 80–85%: 86% in the port city of Buenaventura and 83.5% in Quibdó (a bit lower in Tumaco, 73.6%). Petro’s best municipality, with no less than 98.6% (!) was Timbiquí, a remote coastal municipality in Cauca (around 80% black), perhaps best known for the band Herencia de Timbiquí. A fine article in El País talks about Petro’s victory in Timbiquí, including the huge logistical challenges of increasing turnout in such an isolated region (accessible only by airplane or by boat) and how the feelings of being invisible or nadies are such strong factors in Petro’s support here. According to the MOE, Petro won 99% of the Afro-Colombian community councils (consejos comunitarios) with voting locations with 88% of the vote.
Petro also did very well among indigenous voters in most regions of the country. This is quite obvious in northern Cauca, which has the strongest and most politically active indigenous movement. Petro won around 95% in Toribío and Jambaló, the homeland of the Páez (Nasa) people. According to the MOE, Petro won about 90% of the indigenous resguardos with voting locations with 79% of the vote on average.
At the other end, Rodolfo’s best department was Norte de Santander, where he won 77.9%. The border department is the most anti-petrista department in the country since 2018. Incidentally, Rodolfo won the exact same share of the vote as Duque won in that department four years ago in the runoff! In the first round, Rodolfo won 54.1%, with Fico winning 25%.
As the main border department with Venezuela, Norte de Santander has always been closely interconnected with the ‘brother country’ and now has the Venezuelan crisis right in front of it. It has suffered the impact of the migrant crises (ever since Venezuela deported thousands of Colombians beginning in 2015) and the economic effects of the border closures (the border city of Cúcuta has high unemployment and labour informality rates). The fear of castrochavismo is very real in this region, and Petro is seen as a candidate who supports ideas similar to that of the Venezuelan regime.
Since 2018, Petro has gotten stronger in most regions. This article in El País compares the 2018 and 2022 results by municipality, and show that the left grew in most of the country — notably in the Caribbean, the Pacific, Bogotá, Amazonia but also in Antioquia, the Eje Cafetero, Tolima, Huila and most of the Llanos Orientales. The left only lost ground compared to 2018 in the Santanderes, in large part because of Rodolfo’s big favourite son appeal (Petro won 26% in Santander, compared to 35.2% in 2018), and parts of rural Boyacá, northern Cundinamarca and some municipalities in Casanare and eastern Arauca.
The ‘two Colombias’ reflect a regionally polarized and divided country, with different visions and aspirations for the future even though both ‘countries’ voted for ‘change’.
Gustavo Petro’s coalition unites a diverse range of people who feel that Colombia needs profound changes not just to its politics but also its socioeconomic system and economic model. A coalition which includes the youth and urban poor who protested in huge numbers in 2019 and 2021, as well as the voices of the invisible nadies from ‘forgotten’ or overlooked regions who want to be heard and finally want a seat at the table. Rodolfo Hernández’s coalition includes many who feel that the biggest problem in Colombia is widespread corruption in the political system, as well as many who are worried (not without reason) about what Petro’s version of change really entails.
Petro wants to (and needs to) reconcile the ‘two countries’ — which, again, have existed since at least 2014. One of Iván Duque’s biggest mistakes is that he clearly only governed for the half of the country that had voted for him, ignoring or attacking the other half. Juan Manuel Santos tried (perhaps halfheartedly and in a rush), with no success, to reconcile the two Colombias after the traumatism of the 2016 plebiscite. It will be difficult for Petro to find lasting success and political capital if he keeps half of the country against him.
Conclusions
I feel that politicians, journalists and others are far too quick to call every election ‘historic’ or to proclaim that an election is the most important one in a long time. However, the 2022 Colombian presidential election really was an historic election.
It marks the end of a political era, which began with Álvaro Uribe’s election in 2002, and begins the transition to a new political era, with new and different political actors. Nobody knows what this new era will look like, but Rodolfo’s success (in defiance of all established rules and norms of campaigning) and Petro’s victory mean that it will probably be quite different.
It is historic as the first victory of the left in Colombia’s 200-plus years of republican history, moreover with the symbolism of the executive duo being made up of a demobilized member of a guerrilla group and an Afro-Colombian woman from a poor background.
Gustavo Petro comes in facing extremely high expectations, fed by his own very ambitious platform and campaign promises. Colombian political history, however, is a graveyard of good intentions and lavish, ambitious promises. After an incredible victory, Petro now faces a huge challenge in living up to his supporters’ expectations.
