Colombia votes in polarized election with leftist Cepeda leading but no runoff guarantee

Colombia woke on May 31st to cast ballots in a presidential election that will almost certainly require a second round. The country's electoral registry counted over 41 million eligible voters, and the question before them was stark: continue the social reform agenda of the outgoing leftist government, or pivot sharply toward security-focused, market-driven policies. No candidate appeared likely to clear the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright on the first ballot.

Iván Cepeda, a 63-year-old senator from the Historical Pact coalition, led every poll. His advantage ranged from modest to commanding depending on the pollster—some showed him at 37 percent, others at 44 percent—but his lead was consistent. Cepeda carries the weight of his family's history. His father, a Communist Party member, was assassinated in 1994 by state agents working with paramilitaries. That tragedy has shaped Cepeda's decades of work on human rights and his role in negotiating the 2016 peace accord with the FARC. He proposes eliminating the private health insurance intermediaries that currently manage Colombia's healthcare system, strengthening public hospitals instead, and implementing a progressive tax reform paired with what he calls a Republican Austerity Law.

But Cepeda's path to the presidency was being challenged by a figure who barely existed in Colombian politics six months earlier. Abelardo de la Espriella, a 47-year-old lawyer and businessman, entered the race with a movement called Defenders of the Homeland and immediately captured the energy of voters hungry for radical change. De la Espriella models himself on figures like Nayib Bukele, Javier Milei, and José Antonio Kast—the new-wave right-wing populists reshaping Latin America. He campaigns in a bulletproof vest behind protective barriers, warns that Colombia faces an existential moment, and accuses the government of trying to perpetuate its power (without evidence). His platform centers on security, fighting corruption, and free enterprise. He has been questioned for once representing Álex Saab, the Colombian businessman accused by the United States of serving as a front man for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro's corruption schemes, though de la Espriella argues that relationship ended six years ago. Depending on the poll, he was running second with between 27 and 36 percent of the vote.

Paloma Valencia, a 48-year-old senator and lawyer from the conservative Democratic Center party of former president Álvaro Uribe, was fighting to secure the second runoff spot. She had won the party's nomination after a bruising internal battle, especially following the 2025 assassination of another conservative candidate, Miguel Uribe Turbay. Valencia has positioned herself slightly toward the center, creating space between Uribe's hardline conservatism and the leftist government. She polled between 12 and 21 percent, depending on the survey.

The election unfolded against a backdrop of profound polarization and competing visions for the country's future. The healthcare system was in crisis—all candidates agreed on that much—but their remedies diverged sharply. Cepeda wanted to eliminate private intermediaries and strengthen public provision. The right defended continued private participation. On poverty, the government pointed to real progress: multidimensional poverty had fallen to 9.9 percent, the lowest on record, and monetary poverty to 31.8 percent, the lowest in thirteen years. Yet those numbers masked enormous gaps between rural and urban areas, and many new jobs remained precarious. The question was whether to deepen structural reforms or return to a market-oriented model.

Security remained the defining issue. Colombia recorded homicide rates of 25 to 26 per 100,000 inhabitants and ranked among the world's most violent countries by organized crime measures—second only to Ecuador in the region. Armed groups continued to operate in rural areas. Three hundred eighty-nine municipalities, home to 30 percent of the population, were under alert for potential election-related violence. De la Espriella proposed a militarized approach reminiscent of Uribe's "Democratic Security" doctrine, including rapid offensives and glyphosate fumigation if necessary. Valencia advocated "Total Security" with greater community involvement. Cepeda spoke of negotiation and social transformation, framing security as a human rights issue rooted in addressing the structural causes of violence.

The outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, and his vice president, Francia Márquez—the first Afro-descendant to hold that office—were not running because a constitutional reform passed in 2015 limited presidents to a single four-year term. This was not a failure of the left but a legal constraint. The new Congress, elected in March, had shifted the balance of power. Whoever won would need to negotiate with both the Historical Pact and the Democratic Center to avoid legislative gridlock and manage a fiscal crisis. Agreement would not come easily.

As voters headed to polls on a Sunday morning in late May, the election carried the weight of broader Latin American trends: punishment votes against incumbent governments, the rise of inexperienced populists promising radical change, and the spread of fraud narratives before results were even counted. The first round would almost certainly force a runoff on June 21. What happened then would determine not just who governed from the presidential palace in Bogotá, but how Colombia would approach armed conflict, healthcare, poverty, and the violence that continued to scar its regions.