Colombia heads to runoff as ultra-right De la Espriella shocks with first-round victory

Colombia woke Sunday to an unexpected political earthquake. Abelardo de la Espriella, a criminal defense lawyer and political newcomer running under the ultraright banner of Defensores de la Patria, captured 43.7 percent of the vote—some 10.3 million ballots—in the first round of the presidential election. He finished ahead of Iván Cepeda, the leftist senator and continuity candidate backed by sitting president Gustavo Petro, who drew 40.9 percent, or roughly 9.6 million votes. The result sent shock waves through a nation that had expected a different outcome entirely.

For a quarter-century, Colombia's right had orbited around Álvaro Uribe, the former president who shaped conservative politics for two decades. Uribe had backed Paloma Valencia, a senator from his Centro Democrático party, hoping to keep the right within the institutional mainstream. But voters had other ideas. They rejected the establishment choice and instead embraced de la Espriella, known as "the Tiger" to his supporters—a man who built his fortune defending controversial clients, who admires Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, and who promised to dismantle Petro's "Total Peace" policy in favor of hardline security measures and megaprisons modeled on El Salvador. Valencia finished third with just 6.9 percent of the vote. Uribe, reading the result as a repudiation of his judgment, quickly pivoted and endorsed de la Espriella, as did Valencia herself within hours.

The shock cut deeper because the polls had not predicted this. Surveys had shown Cepeda leading, with de la Espriella in second place but not by much. What the numbers missed was the intensity of voter appetite for a break with the left. More than 23 million Colombians cast ballots—nearly 58 percent of the electoral census, the highest turnout in recent elections—and they made clear they wanted neither the center nor the traditional right. They wanted something harder, more disruptive, more willing to confront what they saw as the failures of Petro's first four years: rising homicides, expanding criminal organizations, and a peace process that critics said had strengthened rather than weakened armed groups.

But the night did not end in celebration. Both Cepeda and Petro rejected the preliminary count, known as the preconteo. Petro issued a statement on social media claiming that the electoral software had been altered three times in the previous week and that 800,000 names had been added to the voter rolls without appearing in the official census. He said he would accept only results certified by judges through the formal escrutinio process. Cepeda echoed the complaint, citing a discrepancy of 885,000 voters and alleging that hundreds of thousands of votes had been added without corresponding voters. He also accused Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, of interfering in the election by announcing a tariff reduction on Colombian goods in a video call with de la Espriella just two days before voting. De la Espriella, for his part, called for U.S. observation of the runoff and warned that "the people will rise up and punish" anyone who tried to overturn the results.

The accusations and counter-accusations reflected a deeper fracture in institutional trust. Colombia had deployed 248,000 military and police personnel to secure the voting, and the election itself passed without major incident despite warnings that 80 municipalities faced maximum risk from armed groups. Yet the preliminary results sparked immediate dispute. The Prosecutor General reported that 77 people listed as disappeared in the conflict had appeared at polling stations and cast votes—a discovery that, while ultimately explained as cases of people found alive, underscored the fragility of the electoral rolls.

The path forward is a runoff on June 21, just three weeks away. De la Espriella and Cepeda will face each other in a contest that has already become a proxy war over Colombia's identity. The center, which had hoped to play a mediating role, has been marginalized. Sergio Fajardo, the centrist candidate, drew only 4 percent of the vote—about one million ballots—enough to matter in a close race but not enough to claim the presidency. The same was true of Claudia López, the former Bogotá mayor, who received just over 223,000 votes. Even the blank vote—a protest option—drew more support than several candidates, capturing 404,000 ballots, or 1.7 percent.

What happens next depends partly on mathematics and partly on the resolution of the electoral dispute. If the preliminary results hold, the runoff will pit a candidate promising radical security measures and a smaller state against one defending social spending and negotiated peace. The outcome will shape not just Colombia but the broader trajectory of Latin America, where the region has been tilting rightward in recent years. For now, the country waits for the formal count and for June 21, when voters will decide whether to embrace the tiger or hold to the path of the left.