More than 41.4 million Colombians This Sunday they have the opportunity to decide who will be the new president starting in August and until 2030. The elections could not be removed from a logic of the polarization that has marked these years. Hence the dispute has become a controversy over the Gustavo Petro era that will affect the result of this first electoral round. Its popularity is 49%. The polls prior to the closing of the campaign predict a second electoral instance on June 21 between Iván Cepeda, the candidate who claims the work of the first left-wing Government in Colombian history, and the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella. The standard bearer of the Historical Pact would have a voting intention that ranges between 37% and 44%. Cepeda would have to reach 50% of the votes to win this Sunday. Analysts believe that this would be a political feat beyond the calculations of all consulting firms. De la Espriella has established itself as its rival, but Paloma Valencia, the representative of the traditional right that the former president has embodied since the beginning of the century Alvaro Uribealso clings to the miraculous possibility of displacing him and gathering the entire conservative spectrum behind him.
The strong antagonism between the left and the different forms of the right has made the other eight participants in the elections less competitive. “The surveys also reflect the weakening of the political center. Candidates like those of Claudia López and Sergio Fajardo do not exceed 4% in the measurements,” the magazine noted. Change. That dividing line has also generated other regroupings. According to analyst León Valencia, “the fear produced by the rise in the polls of the new rightled by Abelardo de la Espriella, with that populist and radical accent, pushed the grouping of the entire left.” The question that will be answered as the weeks go by has to do, in the case of a second round, with Cepeda’s chances of gathering more adhesions than the confluence of right-wing expressions. He would inexorably need to lend a hand to the center parties that were devoured by polarization.
violent background
Not the entire country experiences the institutional rite in the same way. The abundance of fiery words and the exaltation of the “hard hand” They have another disturbing background that could also leave its mark in this contest where violence is much more than a verbal resourceespecially far from large urban districts. According to the Electoral Observation Mission, at least 386 municipalities face pressure from armed groupsespecially in Cauca, Catatumbo, Bajo Cauca Antioquia and Valle del Cauca. There, the population is subject to threats, mobility restrictions and “direct pressure on their political preferences.” Meanwhile, a group of several NGOs grouped in the Space for Cooperation for Peace (ECP), issued a strong warning days ago about the dangers surrounding competition at the polls. “There is an escalation of violence and social control that implies coercion in the exercise of electoral democracy”.
Colombia has entered these elections under the lasting impact of the assassination of a right-wing presidential candidate, Miguel Uribe Turbay, 39 years old. Although the attack took place in June 2025 and the death occurred two months later, it spread a pall of anxiety in a society that has experienced serial episodes of death in the recent past. The peace agreement between the State and the FARCin 2016, put an end to a half-century armed conflict, but it was far from appeasing the language of weapons. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) created by the same pact signed in Havana has recorded that 460 ex-guerrillas were killed by mid-2025. So far in 2026, the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) has computed the murder of 55 social leaders and human rights defenders, a crime every 48 hours. During the past year, there were 187 incidents of the same lethal nature.
Petro tried to achieve “Total Peace” with all the protagonists of the violence, the remnants of the FARC, the National Liberation Army (ELN), paramilitaries and drug traffickers. All of these formations are sometimes juxtaposed and it is not known who is who, especially when the drug business and the control of territories are at stake. The Government’s efforts to stop the wave of bloodshed did not live up to expectations considering that the Clan del Golfo, the largest drug group in that countryhad 4,000 members in 2022, when Petro took office, and at present it is estimated that there are at least 10,000 despite the blows it received from the State.
The homicide rate was between 25.6 and 25.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025according to the National Police. That figure represented a slight increase of one point compared to 2024. The Study Center for Conflict Analysis (CERAC) estimates that 70% of homicides occur due to confrontations between criminals. The most serious thing is that extortion increased fivefold and kidnapping tripled. All these facts constitute the breeding ground for the programmatic platform of right-wing candidates. Both De la Espriella and Valencia consider it imperative to completely change Petro’s current security policy and launch a ruthless offensive against all forms of crime. The Salvadoran model of Nayib Bukele floats in the air of his proposals.
Fraud allegations
Colombians vote without another ghost, agitated by the Government itself, having been completely cleared up: that of possible irregularities. The Historical Pact has warned about the guarantees of software of scrutiny and has targeted the private companies Thomas Greg, ASD, Indra and JAHV McGregor, accused in the past for failures in the traceability of votes and errors that modified results. Petro himself drew attention to these possible risks and even spoke of a “big fraud“.
The Attorney General’s Office asked the Commission on Accusations of the House of Representatives for a detailed report on these complaints, but to accuse the president of improper participation in politics in the middle of the race. The National Registry of Civil Status, in charge of the identity of citizens and the organization of the elections, rejected any anomaly on the eve of the contest. “You have to accept the results”Registrar Hernán Penagos asked. “Democracy cannot cost Colombia deaths and destruction.”
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