2022 Colombian Election Digest IV: Election preview

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Colombian Politics and Elections

30 min readMar 11, 2022

The Colombian congressional elections and three presidential primaries are this Sunday! This special fourth edition of my weekly digest is a pre-electoral round-up of the latest news from the campaign trail. If you haven’t already, you can read the first, second and third editions.

This special pre-electoral edition focuses on the main questions and expectations for the congressional and primary elections. It’s a very lengthy post, reflecting the complexity of these elections. I have introduced the presidential candidates here and the 16 lists for the Senate here.

Latest news

Germán Vargas Lleras 2022?

As noted in last week’s digest, a strange prime-time campaign ad on Sunday night by Cambio Radical which effusively praised the party’s natural leader, former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, fueled speculation about a potential last minute candidacy. Vargas Lleras again denied the rumours on Monday, but they were rekindled by the announcement that CR had requested an appointment to register a presidential candidate with the Registraduría. On March 11, CR registered the presidential candidacy of its secretary general, Germán Córdoba. This is part of the plan, revealed by El Colombiano, to create an opening for the possibility of a Vargas Lleras candidacy. All will depend on what happens on Sunday, as the party itself said on Friday upon filing its candidacy: “We will carefully observe the results of the elections this Sunday, March 13, and we will make a final decision on our candidate for the Presidency of the Republic”:

In the plan, Germán Córdoba is a fill-in candidacy to save the spot for the party if Vargas Lleras does decide to run — parties can modify their registration until Friday March 18. Vargas Lleras’ plan is for a last-minute express candidacy as an ‘elder statesman’ to ‘save’ Colombia from Petro and ‘populism’. This is based on a (not inaccurate) analysis of what’s going on: Petro is the favourite, with a good chance of running away with it because no one is able to even catch up to him, with the centre an hopeless disaster and the right’s candidates not particularly strong (unlike Duque in 2018 after the primary), so there could theoretically be a viable opening for a centre-right candidate who could emerge as the one strong alternative to block Petro.

Whether this happens will depend on what happens on Sunday. If Fajardo or Galán win the centrist primary, then Alejandro Gaviria’s machines would be orphaned, and if a weaker candidate like Alex Char or David Barguil win the right-wing primary, there would be a viable opening for Vargas Lleras. It will still be very difficult for this to work. If he runs, Vargas Lleras would only further divide the right rather than unite it. Vargas Lleras was humiliatingly routed in 2018, and if 2018 wasn’t his year, then 2022 definitely won’t be either: ‘elder statesman who thinks Colombian politics are the same as in the 90s’ is definitely not the profile that’s going to stop Petro.

Other news

The six candidates not competing in the primaries have officially filed their candidacies: Óscar Iván Zuluaga (CD), Rodolfo Hernández (Liga), Luis Pérez (Colombia Piensa en Grande), Luis Gilberto Murillo (Colombia Renaciente), Íngrid Betancourt (Green Oxygen) and Ernesto Gómez (MSN).
Ingrid Betancourt chose retired colonel José Luis Esparza as her running-mate. Esparza was the mastermind and commander of Operation Jaque which liberated Betancourt and other hostages from captivity in July 2008. Betancourt had been held hostage by the FARC for over six years since she had been kidnapped by the guerrilla while campaigning for the presidency in February 2002. Betancourt is trying to play on the military operation which rescued her, because her slogan is Jaque a la corrupción (checkmate to corruption).
A classic peñalosada from Enrique Peñalosa: in an interview he took credit for recovering public spaces in Kyiv, Ukraine — he said that “In Kyiv I worked a lot to get cars off the sidewalks and it was very successful. I managed to recover public space in Kyiv, which was a disaster”. Peñalosa has a tendency to make bizarre, strange and somewhat arrogant comments, and he has an obsession with urbanism and public spaces in large cities (and the idea that equality begins with sidewalks).
President Iván Duque met with President Joe Biden on March 10. The main outcome was the US granting Colombia special non-NATO ally status. Duque likely raised Colombia’s concerns about the recent visit of US officials to Caracas to meet with Maduro’s government, amidst rumours that the US will ease oil sanctions on Venezuela and restart crude oil imports from Venezuela (after the US ban on Russian oil). Colombia’s government has been critical of this possibility. Duque continues to insist on a tough, intransigent line against the Maduro government, but this strategy has largely been a failure.

Questions & expectations: Presidential primaries

Voters will have the choice to request ballots for one of the three primaries on Sunday: the left-wing Pacto Histórico, the centrist Centro Esperanza and the centre-right/right Equipo por Colombia. Voters will need to ask to receive a ballot, but these ballots will be counted first after the polls close. There are a total of 15 candidates competing in the three primaries (5 candidates in each), and the primaries will therefore narrow down those 15 to just three, who will join the (up to) six other candidates who are on the first round ballot in May. It is likely that this field of 9 candidates may be narrowed even further as weaker candidates drop out. The presidential election started with as many as 70 candidates, so finally the field will get clearer!

Of course the main questions will be: who will win each of the three primaries, and which primary will attract the most voters?

Three primary ballots (source: Registraduría)

Turnout and the ‘inter-primary race’

Given the widespread media coverage of the primaries, it is expected that they will draw millions of voters. The primaries have become a kind of first round election in what could essentially be seen as a three round presidential election.

Since 2006, there has always been at least one primary coinciding with the congressional elections in March, although this is the first time that there will be more than two primaries on the same day.

Turnout in past primaries coinciding with cong. elections

In 2018, a record-breaking 9.6 million voters participated in the two primaries, equivalent to 54% of those who voted in congressional elections at the same time (17.8 million). This was a massive turnout, made all the more impressive by the fact that neither primary was very competitive! In 2018, the right-wing primary, won by Iván Duque, had a turnout of 6.1 million voters while the left-wing primary, won by Gustavo Petro, had a turnout of 3.5 million voters — therefore about 63.5% of voters opted for the right-wing primary. Duque and Petro, the winners, won 4 million and 2.85 million votes respectively.

The success of both primaries in 2018, measured by turnout, provided a momentum boost to both winners, especially Duque. This, however, has not always been the case: Enrique Peñalosa won the Green primary in 2014 with 2 million votes, and over 4.2 million people voted in the primary, but he went on to win only 1 million votes in the first round. In 2010, Noemí Sanín defeated Andrés Felipe Arias (uribito, Uribe’s favourite to succeed him) in the Conservative primary, with 1.1 million votes out of 3 million total voters, but she did very poorly in the first round, with just 893,000 votes. It was the Green primary held at the same time (won by Antanas Mockus), which had a lower but still good turnout (1.8 million), which fueled the Green Wave (ola verde) behind Mockus.

The primaries in 2022 are more competitive than in 2018 (except the left-wing Pacto) and have more candidates (15 in total against 5 in total in 2018). Competition will be intense between the three coalitions to be the one with the highest turnout. Polls suggest the Pacto Histórico will win that coveted title, and that the centrists will be the big losers.

Two recent predictions estimate that there could be over 16 million votes

In a recent interview, Jorge Rojas, a very close ally and associate of Gustavo Petro, said that he expects 5 million votes in the Pacto’s primary. If Petro wins the primary with 80%, as expected, then Petro would have about 4 million votes. This seems to be a rather reasonable, if optimistic, expectation. The goal for the Pacto will be to win more votes than the left’s primary did four years ago (3.5 million) to show the strength of their coalition and the ‘Petro phenomenon’ going into May. One would assume that anything under 4 million votes would be a big disappointment for the Pacto’s primary.

It is unlikely that the right-wing Equipo por Colombia primary will be able to repeat the success of the right’s primary in 2018, but they could still do quite well — aiming at 5 million votes. The popular mood is not as right-wing as it was four years ago, and not all (though many) uribistas will vote in this primary as the CD is not (officially) participating in any primary. It is hard to estimate how many votes this primary may hope to attract. It has candidates backed by parties and machines who will likely turn out well in the congressional elections — Barguil’s Conservatives, the charista machines of the Caribbean coast, the Partido de la U machine in the Valle for Peñalosa, the MIRA’s disciplined vote, uribistas for Fico Gutiérrez — but it is unclear how efficient these parties and machines will be at helping a presidential candidate. The Conservatives, Partido de la U and MIRA won 4.2 million votes in 2018 (although the Partido de la U has definitely lost strength since then), plus the charistas from CR to that (450–480k?), giving at least 4.7 million votes.

The Centro Esperanza goes into these primaries with their coalition having effectively imploded, deeply divided between the big egos of their candidates, and the perception that all they’ve done for the past 5 months is squabble amongst themselves. Definitely not a good look going into the primaries… It’s not too surprising that two recent polls have both found that the centrists will have the lowest turnout of the three coalitions. It’s even harder to estimate how many votes the hopeless centre will get: it is a coalition largely driven by the fickle and unpredictable voto de opinión with few strong parties or machines behind them. In 2018, the Greens won 1.3 million votes, although not all Greens will support the centrist coalition on Sunday, plus Jorge Enrique Robledo’s 226,000 votes from the Polo. In the first round in May 2018, Sergio Fajardo won more than 4.5 million votes (in a higher turnout election: 19.6 million votes rather than 17.8 million in March 2018).

The regional breakdown of the ‘inter-primary’ race will also be interesting. The Pacto wants and needs to grow in conservative Antioquia (which has 5 million registered voters), where the left’s primary got less than 170,000 votes in 2018 compared to 997,000 for the right’s primary. It will also seek to grow in other regions which were very right-wing in 2018: Norte de Santander on the Venezuelan border, the Eje Cafetero (Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío), Santander, Tolima and Huila. It will need to prove its continued strength in the Caribbean region, competing with the powerful traditional machines behind Alex Char and David Barguil. In 2018, the left’s primary had higher turnout in all Caribbean departments except for Cesar and San Andrés. In the Atlántico, the Char clan’s stronghold, the left’s primary had 243,000 votes against 233,000 votes for the right’s primary.

Pacto Histórico

The Pacto Histórico’s primary is not competitive, and the winner is already predetermined: Gustavo Petro. He may win up to 80% of the vote in his primary (in 2018, with only one rival, Carlos Caicedo, he won 84.7%).

The real race will be for second place (although there is no longer any guarantee that Petro will pick his runner-up as running mate), and polls suggest that Francia Márquez, the Afro-Colombian activist from Cauca, will place a distant second. If she gets a lot of votes (over 500,000), that would be a major victory for her and make her more of a counterweight to Petro’s dominance in the Pacto, especially given that she draws her support from marginalized and underrepresented groups and because she wasn’t particularly well treated or welcomed with open arms by her colleagues in the coalition. A strong result for her would also make it harder for Petro not to pick her as his running-mate, something which he clearly doesn’t want.

Camilo Romero may also be in contention for second. He’s competed in a primary before: in 2014, in the Green primary against Peñalosa, winning 730,000 votes. He may win his native department of Nariño, where he was governor (2016–2019).

Centro Esperanza

The centrist primary is somewhat competitive. The favourites are Sergio Fajardo and Juan Manuel Galán. Two recent polls have both put Fajardo ahead, although with varying margins and with the highest number of undecideds (and highest margin of error) of any primary.

Fajardo, who finished third in the 2018 presidential election, has the big advantage of his presidential candidacies, high name recognition and years of political experience. These are not negligible advantages, even though his campaign was uninspiring, slow and fairly insipid. Galán is popular, quite well known (but not as well known still as Fajardo) and has a famous and symbolic last name, but his support may be soft and it is unclear how his likeability will translate into votes.

Alejandro Gaviria, the source of discord within the coalition, is hard to pin down. He is popular with Bogotá’s upper-class liberal intellectual elite, who are very overrepresented in the media and commentariat, but he may not be as popular (and well known) with the bulk of the country — the old chasm between Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s país político and país nacional. Alejandro Gaviria has also (controversially) received the support of traditional political machines who have organized events for him on their turf — former governor Jorge Rey in Cundinamarca, several Liberal congressmen (like Miguel Ángel Pinto in Santander) and retiring Partido de la U senator Germán Hoyos in Antioquia, among others. How effective will these machines be at ‘putting votes’ for him in the centrist primary? If turnout is particularly low in the centrist primary, then he stands a better chance at winning because it is likely that the few votes in that primary would be put by the machines which support him. In any case, in the event that Gaviria wins the primary, he will not be supported by all of his fellow candidates: Jorge Enrique Robledo has already said he wouldn’t support him (though he may be ‘forced’ to, or prevented from openly endorsing someone else, by law).

Carlos Amaya, despite appearances and claims to the contrary, also has political networks (machines?) of his own, in his native Boyacá, where he was governor (2016–2019) and still has an ally as governor since then. Of course, that on its own will not be close to enough to win. Jorge Enrique Robledo, finally, likely has the weakest support of the five candidates.

Equipo por Colombia

The right-wing primary is quite competitive. Three to four of the five candidates could be considered as viable. The favourites are Federico ‘Fico’ Gutiérrez, Alex Char and David Barguil. Two polls have found Fico narrowly ahead of Char, while polls by Cifras & Conceptos only among self-defined right-wingers have shown David Barguil to be leading.

Each of the five candidates have their strengths and weaknesses:

Fico Gutiérrez will have a favourite son vote in Medellín and Antioquia — he left office as mayor of Medellín with very high approvals — and over the past week(s) he has received increasingly explicit support from many uribistas/duquistas. Besides uribista factions, he doesn’t have the machine support that other candidates have, but he could be better than any of his rivals at attracting the right-wing/conservative voto de opinión (although Barguil could give him a run for his money here) and he may be perceived as the coalition’s strongest candidate for the first round.
Alex Char has led an unusual campaign (only showing up to one debate, virtually through Zoom) and has, surprisingly, eschewed openly embracing (controversial) politicians from his charista machines, although he’s relied on them to collect his 2 million+ signatures last year (while he was largely invisible, if not on vacation in Miami…) and to organize campaign events this year during his relatively short campaign. His main strength, of course, are these machines — hegemonic in Barranquilla (Atlántico) and with significant tentacles in Magdalena, Sucre and Cesar (through the even more controversial Gnecco clan), and with more recent alliances with machines in southern departments like Huila and Putumayo. However, one still gets the feeling that Char’s heart is not entirely in this campaign, and he is, of course, the candidate carrying the most baggage and with the most skeletons.
David Barguil’s campaign is betting everything on the machines of his party, the Conservative Party, and relying on them to win the primary. It’s not a bad strategy, because the machines will be active on March 13, and the Conservatives won 1.9 million votes in the 2014 and 2018 congressional elections. Barguil hasn’t been ashamed or embarrassed by the support he’s received from traditional and controversial politicians in his party, including the Aguilar clan in Santander (former governor Hugo Aguilar is convicted of parapolítica and his son Richard is in prison for corruption/embezzlement), and has gone on stage with them. Politicians are more motivated to put their machines at a candidate’s disposal if they’re openly embraced, rather than shunned. Barguil also has the support of the political groups behind the Liberal governors of Sucre and his native Córdoba, as well as the governor of Bolívar, Vicente Blel (brother of Conservative senator Nadia Blel and son of convicted parapolítico Vicente Blel Saad). La Silla Vacía even says that Barguil has an edge over Char in terms of machine support in the Caribbean region. Barguil is also seeking to attract a right-wing, socially conservative electorate with his strong stances on drugs and against abortion, to take advantage of any conservative backlash to the Constitutional Court’s recent decision to decriminalize abortion up to 24 weeks. In sum, Barguil shouldn’t be counted out.
Enrique Peñalosa on his own isn’t very strong and he’s unlikely to draw as large a favourite son vote in Bogotá as Fico is in Medellín, given his unpopularity as mayor. It is again quite telling that Peñalosa was unable to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot by himself, when other candidates with less name recognition and experience like Juan Carlos Echeverry (who later dropped out) were able to do so. However, Peñalosa is reliant on the party which gave him its endorsement, the Partido de la U, specifically the machine of its leader, Dilian Francisca Toro, in the Valle del Cauca. Toro has been so important to his fledgling campaign, finally giving it a shot in the arm, that Peñalosa has said that she’d be his running-mate if he wins.
Aydeé Lizarazo, the candidate of the Christian testimonial party MIRA, does not have a realistic chance at winning but she has the very disciplined vote of her party, which won 500,000 votes in 2018.

Those not in the primaries…

Even though six candidates are not competing in the primaries, the sheer importance of these primaries as a quasi-first round will have an impact on those candidates as well.

First and foremost, of course, is uribista candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga, abandoned or ignored by many of his own teammates, who could be compelled to withdraw quickly if Fico wins the right-wing primary and/or if the CD’s performance in the congressional elections is particularly bad. Álvaro Uribe’s main preoccupation and objective in this election will be to defeat Petro, and he won’t waste his remaining political capital on a candidate who is stuck at 8% in the polls.

Rodolfo Hernández remains a distant second or third in the polls behind Petro, but he is not competing in the primaries and there are signs that his momentum has stagnated. His campaign has slowed down, likely saving its energy for after March 13, where he will really need to stand out even more. In any case, however, Rodolfo will continue until May regardless, but the results on Sunday could end up weakening or (less likely) strengthening his campaign.

Candidates like Luis Pérez and Luis Gilberto Murillo who barely register in the polls might end up dropping out during the campaign. In Luis Pérez’s case, back in November there was speculation (and an ensuing controversy) about his joining the Pacto Histórico — that didn’t happen, but it is likely that Gustavo Petro would still welcome Pérez’s support, as part of his obsession to gain support in Antioquia, through whichever means (even if that means allying with someone like Pérez). Enrique Gómez, however, is likely to go until the end regardless of his support, to get publicity for his family’s revived party (the MSN).

It will be interesting to see how Íngrid Betancourt’s campaign goes if the centrist primary is won by Fajardo with whom she doesn’t have bad relations. Her support in the polls is weak but not entirely irrelevant, although it will certainly be squeezed as the real first round campaign gets underway.

Questions & expectations: Congressional elections

The congressional elections have kind of been overshadowed by the primaries, which is understandble but unfortunate as any president will need a majority in Congress if he (as it will most likely be a ‘he’) wants to govern. Congressional elections because of the electoral system and the thousands of candidates running in the different constituencies are difficult to predict (and open to greater manipulation and fraud).

Congressional results will be counted after the primaries. The results released are a preliminary, unofficial count known as the preconteo. The final count, the escrutinio, takes days and the results may differ from the preconteo.

Sample congressional ballots for the House of Representatives in Bogotá and the national Senate (source: Registraduría)

Turnout

In 2018, turnout in the congressional elections was 49%, the highest turnout in congressional elections since 1990. Colombia is a low turnout country (except, paradoxically, in local elections), so anything close to or above 50% turnout is considered as good or even ‘high’ turnout. Turnout was 44% in the 2010 and 2014 congressional elections. Turnout increased by 5% between 2014 and 2018, with 3.3 million more votes being cast.

A lot of the increase in turnout in 2018 came from major cities, where turnout had been low in 2014. The two coinciding primaries and generally higher interest for the elections in 2018 likely attracted the urban voto de opinión which had preferred to sit out elections to a ‘corrupt’ Congress dominated by los mismos de siempre (pejoratively ‘the same people as always’) in 2014. The clearest case was Bogotá (discussed here), where turnout was 13% higher in 2018 than in 2014. Turnout also increased in nearly all other major cities including Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Medellín and Cúcuta.

Turnout patterns in congressional elections differ substantially from turnout patterns in presidential elections. The R-squared value for turnout in the 2018 congressional and first round presidential election is just 0.14, whereas the R-squared value for turnout in the 2014 and 2018 congressional elections is much higher, 0.87. Some regions have higher turnout in congressional elections (the Caribbean coast, remote and peripheral departments) while some regions vote more in presidential elections (Bogotá, Antioquia, urban areas in general). This shows the strength of the machine vote (maquinarias) in congressional elections: stereotypically, machines remain stronger in regions like the Caribbean but are much weaker in Bogotá, for example.

Congressional elections are often seen as being dominated by the maquinarias, or the political machines, referring to the clientelistic networks of certain politicians and their clans (it is also known as the voto amarrado, or tied-down vote). Indeed, the machine vote is stronger in congressional elections because the machines (i.e. their leaders) play their own future in those elections, and mobilizing their clientele (through whichever means, which may include vote buying) is key.

There were 17.8 million votes for the Senate in 2018. 6.4% of votes were invalid and 4.9% of ballots were unmarked. This is a high number of invalid votes (1.1 million) and largely owes to the confusing design of the ballot paper since 2006, which has finally been modified this year and should reduce the number of invalid votes. The number of unmarked ballots (870,000) is also quite high in the senatorial election and is highest in remote, sparsely populated departments of the Orinoquía and the Amazon (28% in Guainía, 24.5% in Vaupés) and in San Andrés, which do not elect any senators and where candidates rarely campaign. In total, 15.3 million valid votes were cast in the national constituency for the Senate — 14.47 million for lists and 835k blank votes. Around 500,000 votes were cast in the special indigenous constituency for the Senate, although over two-thirds of them were blank votes (this is, again, likely a result of voter confusion because of ballot design). In the House of Representatives, 386,600 votes were cast in the special indigenous constituency and 426,000 in the special Afro-Colombian constituency.

Will turnout increase in 2022? It very well could, given the political context and the stakes in these elections. There’s a good chance turnout will break that symbolic 50% mark.
Will the primaries drive up turnout? They likely did, in some places (Bogotá and other cities), in 2018, so they will likely drive up turnout in some places while in other places turnout will continue to be driven primarily by the congressional elections. In 2018, the increase in turnout in Bogotá was a surge in the voto de opinión which largely benefited the ‘alternative’ parties of the centre-left/left, the Greens and the petrista coalition.

A recent article by César Caballero, the owner of the pollster Cifras & Conceptos, estimates that turnout will be around 50% with nearly 19.5 million votes in total. This would ‘increase’ the value of 3% threshold for the Senate to at least 505,000, and possibly up to 550,000 if turnout is even higher. In 2018, the 3% threshold was around 460,000, so this means that parties will need more votes to win seats and that they will need to increase their raw vote if they want to keep the same number of seats as four years ago.

The big questions

As I profiled here, there are 16 lists for Senate in the national constituency (which will get the most attention and be used to draw conclusions). In 2018, 10 lists won seats in the Senate (plus the FARC ex oficio and two parties in the indigenous constituency).

A few questions to look for answers to on Sunday:

What will be the biggest party/list in the Senate and the House? In 2018, the largest party in the Senate was the Centro Democrático (19 seats) and the largest party in the House was the Liberal Party (35 seats). Some people expect the left-wing Pacto Histórico coalition with its closed list to win the most seats in the Senate, although the most pessimistic projections for them would have them in second or third (or worse). In the House, it will likely be much more difficult for the Pacto to be the single biggest party.
How many seats does the Pacto win in the Senate / can Petro presidentialize the congressional election and transfer his vote to the Pacto? The Pacto is expected to win anywhere between 10 and 20 seats in the Senate in most people’s minds, but this is a very broad range. Jorge Rojas, the Petro associate mentioned above, set the goal at 21 senators, a very optimistic but not outlandish goal. With the Pacto’s closed coalition list, Petro is trying to ‘presidentialize’ the congressional elections and hope that most of those who will support him in the primary will also vote for the Pacto for both houses of Congress. This clearly did not happen in 2018: he won 2.85 million votes in the primary but the list he supported won only 520,000 votes in the Senate. He’ll certainly be more successful at ‘transferring’ his vote to the Pacto — if he wins 4 million votes in the primary, even if he is only able to ‘transfer’ half of that to the Pacto’s lists, that’s a very significant 2 million votes which would ensure a strong result for the Pacto in Congress (15–16 seats?). It will also be very important for the Pacto to gain many seats in the House, in places other than Bogotá: they are hoping to make gains in places like the Valle, Antioquia, Atlántico, Cauca, Nariño, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Bolívar etc…
What is the balance of power in Congress? The outgoing Congress was dominated by traditional/neo-traditional parties and leaned to the right. Self-declared government parties held 67 seats in the Senate and 83 seats in the House while ‘independent’ parties (Liberals and CR) held 30 seats in the Senate and 66 seats in the House. The opposition (the left) held 23 seats in the Senate and 22 seats in the House. Right-wing parties (CD, Conservatives, Christians) had 38 senators and 55 representatives. What will the two houses look like for the next four years? Will the Congress be more balanced between left and right? What kind of majority will the next president govern with, if any? Will Congress be a counterweight to the president or will it duly accompany the president?
How much will uribismo lose? Uribismo (CD) is expected to suffer losses this year — the government is unpopular, the party is divided, they have a weak presidential candidate outside of any coalition and their leader Álvaro Uribe is not on the ballot (unlike in the past two elections) and he had a massive 890,000 preferential votes in 2018. The CD won 19 senators and 32 representatives in 2018. They may lost 5 or more seats in the Senate and lose their status as the largest party. The CD won 2.5 million votes in 2018 and 2 million votes in 2014. The ‘core’ vote for the CD can be estimated from votes for the party in the 2019 municipal council elections: 1.5 million votes.
How many lists cross the 3% threshold? At least 8 lists are certain or nearly certain of crossing the 3% threshold with relative ease (CD, CR, Lib., Cons., Pacto, La U, Green/CE, MIRA-CJL), with perhaps two lists hovering around it (Nuevo Liberalismo, Fuerza Ciudadana) and one list with a remote, outside chance (Estamos Listas, but this might be wishful thinking).
Who are the top individual candidates? In 2018, several records were broke for individual preferential votes: Álvaro Uribe with over 890,000, Antanas Mockus with 549,000 and Jorge Enrique Robledo with 229,000. None of them are running this year. It is unlikely that these records will be broken, and one of the strongest lists (the Pacto) has a closed list. The Green-Centro Esperanza coalition hopes that Humberto de la Calle, a respected figure, will win a lot of preferential votes to help out the rest of the list. There are also more traditional machine politicians and veteran congressmen who can win a lot of votes: Arturo Char (136,000 in 2018), Efraín Cepeda (125,000) and Lidio Arturo García (122,000) for CR, the Conservatives and Liberals respectively.
How much turnover (renewal) will there be? In 2018, the MOE calculated that of the 108 senators, 41 were re-elected, 33 were new, 24 ascended from the lower house, 8 were ‘heirs’ of former incumbents and two returned to the Senate non-consecutively. If lists like the Pacto, Greens/Centro Esperanza, Nuevo Liberalismo and Fuerza Ciudadana do well, there could be a lot of turnover.
Some projections, please! I don’t have the courage to make any projections myself, but here are two recent ones.

Other questions

There are hundreds of questions worth answering about Sunday’s congressional elections for those who want to dig even deeper… Here are some of them:

Will Cambio Radical (CR) defend its gains from 2018? Four years ago, CR was the big winner, electing 16 senators (+7) and 30 representatives (+14). Now, circumstances are quite different and CR enters the race somewhat weakened (and more divided internally), and it is trying to defend its gains with a combination of the voto de opinión (through its top candidate David Luna and some other candidates) and the ethically questionable machine politics that CR is infamous for (with the Char clan and some others). It will be difficult for them to hold all their gains from 2018, so they are expected to lose a few seats.
Will the Liberal strategy pay off? César Gaviria’s Liberal Party has no presidential candidate of its own (so its politicians have gone off in a thousand directions from left to right) and its strategy has been to maintain its strong presence in Congress (14 senators, 35 reps), in order to increase its bargaining power afterwards when negotiating the party’s support for a presidential candidate. To do so (and to compensate several losses and defections), the Liberal Party is betting on its incumbents and has given its endorsement to a whole bunch of traditional machine politicians, particularly in the Caribbean, ideological coherence be damned. Some of them quite controversial: the Rojano clan in Barranquilla or the sister-in-law of former senator Eduardo Pulgar, in prison for bribing a judge.
Can the Conservatives hold their seats? The Conservative Party suffered losses in 2018 (-4 in the Senate to 14, -6 in the House to 21 seats) as its vote remained stable at 1.9 million. The party would like to hold or improve on these numbers, relying primarily on their incumbents or heirs left behind by retiring incumbents, and perhaps hoping that the fact that for the first time in years the party is fully united behind a presidential candidate of its own (David Barguil) competing in the coinciding primaries will help boost its support (although it might rather be the other way around: Barguil hoping that his party’s traditional machines vote for him too). The Conservatives appear to be in a relatively good position to at least hold their ground.
Does the Partido de la U continue its decline? The Partido de la U has been losing seats since its peak in 2010: falling from 28 senators in 2010 to 21 in 2014 and 14 in 2018 (in the House it has followed a similar downwards trajectory). Numbers aren’t particularly auspicious for them again this year, with many incumbents retiring and two prominent defections to the left (Roy Barreras and Armando Benedetti, emblematic senators of the U since 2010 and 2006 respectively). The party hopes that a nice, fresh façade as its top candidate (Olympic gold medallist Catherine Ibargüen) will hide the same old politicians and their structures/machines, including a lot of controversial ones and heirs of convicted politicians. More likely than not, the party will continue to lose seats, now for the third election in a row.
How will the Greens/Centro Esperanza do? The Greens/Centro Esperanza coalition clearly had high hopes to do well. But the Greens dilapidated their political capital because of their divisions over the presidential election and the endless petty infighting and psychodrama in the centre has likely killed its momentum, meaning that they will struggle to stand out as a coherent centrist alternative. However, they can count on the Greens and their structures/networks (machines?) as well as several candidates who can attract a nice chunk of the urban voto de opinión (first and foremost, of course, their top candidate Humberto de la Calle). In 2018, the Greens did well, winning 8.6% (1.3 million votes) and 9 senators (+4), but that was thanks in large part to Antanas Mockus’ impressive preferential vote haul (nearly 550k), now up for grabs. Anything less than that, however, would probably be very disappointing for the centre…
Will the Nuevo Liberalismo do well? Juan Manuel Galán’s recreated Nuevo Liberalismo wants to be a voto de opinión phenomenon, to build and entrench the party for the long-term. The party’s gender-balanced closed list for the Senate has a lot of fresh faces from civil society (but also a fair amount of politicians and people who’ve worked in the public sector), which may appeal to the urban middle-class voto de opinión, particularly in Bogotá, where the party is concentrating most of its efforts. Under the Constitutional Court decision which revived the party’s legal status, it is exempted from the 3% threshold this year, meaning that it will survive to fight another battle in 2026 regardless of how well it does, but obviously a good result this year will help the new party assert itself as a liberal alternative (and a bad result could kill its nascent momentum).
Can the evangelicals, (mostly) united, gain seats? In 2018, the MIRA won about 500,000 votes and 3 seats and Colombia Justa Libres (CJL) won 465,000 votes and 3 seats. This year, they’re running together. Will their open list hold those 960,000 votes? Can they make further gains? They will also be hoping to gain seats in the House (currently, they only hold 2 seats), with coalition lists (sometimes also in coalitions with other parties like CR and the U), in places like the Valle (the lowest hanging fruit for them).
How does Rodolfo Hernández’s Liga do in Santander? Presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernández is not in any primary and his movement, the Liga de Gobernantes Anticorrupción, is only on the ballot in one place — for the House in his stronghold of Santander. There is a big risk that because he’s not on the ballot anywhere on Sunday, Hernández’s momentum (which has already stagnated) will be overshadowed and he will fade out. But he could make a big statement if his movement does well in Santander. In 2019, the Liga was the phenomenon in Bucaramanga and Santander: it won 8.2% (80,000 votes) in the assembly elections in Santander, and was the largest party in Bucaramanga (with nearly 49,500 votes). The prospect of Rodolfo’s Liga doing well has scared the traditional political groups of Santander (who already took a small hit in 2018), and some of them have preferred to support Rodolfo Hernández. In fact, the top candidate on the Liga’s closed list is a woman who, as recently as 2019, supported the traditional political clans that Rodolfo considers ‘corrupt’ and is close to convicted former governor Mario Camacho and retiring Liberal rep. Edgar ‘El Pote’ Gómez (two traditional politicians who support Rodolfo, contradicting his anti-corruption, anti-politiciking rhetoric).
Does Antioquia remain an uribista stronghold? Antioquia is the cradle and ultimate stronghold of uribismo. The department, home to Medellín, elects 17 representatives, the second most after Bogotá. In 2018, the CD won 32.9% or 591,000 votes (Senate) and elected 7 representatives. Besides the very strong uribista voto de opinión and the native son Álvaro Uribe, the CD also has several old and new machines and networks in Antioquia — like senator Paola Holguín’s group (Los Paolos) and senator Santiago Valencia (son of former minister Fabio Valencia Cossio). Without Uribe leading them, the CD will depend more on these regional structures to hold their positions. While the Liberals and Conservatives will try to retain their strong positions (3 representatives each), the centre-left and left want to grow in a region where they’ve historically been weak — one of Petro’s main objectives is to gain a lot of ground in Antioquia, where he did very badly in 2018. The ambitious (and controversial) young mayor of Medellín, Daniel Quintero, is trying to elect a mini-caucus of his own through candidates in the Pacto Histórico (like Alex Flórez for the Senate and Alejandro Toro for the House) but also in the Greens, Liberals and CR.
Can any of the small lists make it in? Fuerza Ciudadana, the left-wing movement of Magdalena governor Carlos Caicedo, running an open list of its own separate from the rest of the Pacto, is the list with the best chance of winning the 500,000 votes or so required to pass the threshold. It will benefit from the underhanded support from Caicedo’s governorship as well as the left-wing vote its well-known candidates can draw. The only question is whether that will be enough for 3%. A lot of people would like to see Estamos Listas, the collective feminist movement running a closed list with 11 women at the top, make it in as well but it will be very difficult to win over 500,000 votes. It did surprise many in Medellín by winning one council seat in 2019 (with about 4% of the vote), so perhaps they can surprise us again?
Do the Comunes (ex-FARC) win more than 55,000 votes? That’s what the FARC won in 2018, and they hardly did better in 2019 and there’s very little chance that they will do much better in 2022. Of course, it’s a very academic point, since they’re guaranteed five seats in both houses for another term, but their low levels of popular support will undoubtedly raise some very tough, existential questions for the fledgling party going into 2026…
Will the victims’ seats really represent the victims? The novelty this year is the election of 16 additional members in the House representing the victims of the armed conflict in the rural areas of the regions most affected by the conflict (there are 16 transitional constituencies, or Citrep). The theory is that, for two terms, these seats will finally give a voice to the victims of the conflict and the marginalized, peripheral regions that have been ignored or abandoned by the state. But the theory doesn’t often match with the reality in Colombia. The elections in these seats face several major structural threats — the presence of illegal armed groups, a recent upsurge in violence in places like Arauca, the dynamics of illegal economies (drug trafficking, illegal mining etc.), threats against candidates and community organizers and the continued weak presence of the state (too often only in the form of ephemeral military presence for ‘public order’). Candidates have also complained of great difficulties in receiving the public financing they’re entitled to. In many constituencies, there is also a major risk that the seats will end up being coopted by local traditional political clans, for example in the Catatumbo (Citrep 4) and the Pacific coast of Nariño (Citrep 10). But perhaps the most controversial case is the Sierra Nevada-Perijá constituency (12th) with the candidacy of Jorge Rodrigo Tovar, the son of former paramilitary commander ‘Jorge 40’ (expelled from transitional justice, extradited to the US in 2008 and deported back to Colombia in 2020, accused of homicides, massacres, drug trafficking and other major human rights abuses). Recently, 17 candidates in that constituency dropped out, claiming that they lacked guarantees needed to campaign, many of them accusing Tovar of being behind the intimidation and threats which have prevented them from campaigning in certain areas. On the other hand, the election of victims who genuinely represent victims’ interests (rather than the petty interests of powerful clans and traditional parties) would be a very welcome addition to the next Congress.

Can Francia Márquez’s movement win one of the Afro seats? The two Afro-Colombian seats in the House are almost entirely ignored, but they are sought after because winning them grants a group legal recognition as a party. As such, they’ve often been the source of a lot of controversy and some pretty baroque scandals, with the perception that those elected often do not really represent the interests of the Afro-Colombian minority. There are no less than 48 lists competing this year. Among them is Soy Porque Somos, the movement of presidential candidate Francia Márquez (who herself ran in this constituency in 2018, and won just 7,900 votes). But she faces disloyal competition from another part of the Pacto Histórico, the ADA, a party which obtained legal recognition by winning one of the Afro seats in 2018 (and has now used that status to endorse candidates like Roy Barreras), which is also running a list. As always, there are also candidates connected to and/or supported by controversial traditional politicians (see the main candidates here).

These are, of course, only a few of the many questions that will be answered by the elections on March 13. These questions only barely scratch the surface, and do not focus on the local and regional dynamics which are so important in congressional elections.

I hope this pre-electoral coverage has been helpful to help you understand things better. I’ll have more coverage after the elections.

Results will be available on Sunday on the Registraduría’s website.

More resources:

Read or re-read my primer on Colombian institutions to understand them better.
All the main candidates for Congress and all presidential candidates are profiled by La Silla Vacía here
Explore detailed maps of the 2018 elections for Congress here (Senate) and here.