2022 Colombian Election Digest VI: Runoff preview

After the first round of the historic 2022 Colombian presidential elections on May 29, the runoff between Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernández is being held on June 19.

If you’re not up to speed with the results of the first round, I strongly recommend that you start by reading by results analysis here. If you’re curious to learn more about Rodolfo Hernández, read my profile of him here.

Petro and his supporters seemed to be in low spirits on the evening of May 29, because the Petro/Rodolfo matchup had messed up their plans and is much more difficult for them than a runoff against Fico would have been.

On the night of the first round, most people agreed that Rodolfo was the favourite to win the runoff and that Petro didn’t have enough vote reserves to have a real shot at winning. But politics, particularly in Latin America, are unpredictable, and the runoff is extremely close: nobody with any certainty can say who will win.

2+2 isn’t 4

Rodolfo Hernández came into the runoff as the early favourite if only because it is much, much easier for him to gain new votes, particularly from Fico. Most of Fico’s votes are anti-petrista and right-wing, and therefore unlikely to support Petro. Indeed, on the night of the first round, Fico gave a very brief statement in which he endorsed Rodolfo, largely, in his words, to save the country because Petro would be a ‘danger’ for the country.

On a crude mathematical sum, adding Rodolfo’s 6 million votes and Fico’s 5 million votes together gives 11 million votes (or 51% under current turnout). However, in politics, 2+2 is not necessarily equal to 4 — sometimes it can be more, but it can also be less.

On the other hand, Petro has limited room to grow in the runoff and few obvious sources of extra votes, besides a share of Fajardo’s small electorate (885,000). His campaign has optimistically calculated that they just need 1.5 million more votes to win — they calculate that runoff turnout will be a bit lower (20 million) and that the winner will need at least 10 million votes.

If he is to win, Petro has two complementary options:

Firstly, to motivate non-voters to turn out in the runoff for him, the ‘Santos 2014’ strategy. In 2010 and 2018, runoff turnout was lower (very marginally, by less than 0.5% in 2018, but significantly, by 5% in 2010). In 1994, 1998 and 2014, runoff turnout was higher.

In 2014, turnout increased from 40% in the first round to 47.8% in the runoff. After losing the first round to Zuluaga, the uribista candidate, incumbent President Santos’ campaign fired up the clientelist machines in his coalition, who had largely sat on their hands and demobilized their electorate in the first round. Turnout increased very significantly in the Caribbean region, where the santista coalition’s strongest machines were (like the infamous Ñoño Elías and Musa Besaile in Córdoba), and it greatly contributed to Santos’ come-from-behind reelection.

This year, turnout was lower across the Caribbean (a bit lower than in 2018 but not as low as in 2014), where Petro did well, so his campaign will work to increase turnout there. In his election night speech, Petro talked about his Caribbean roots and appealed to costeño regionalism to finally elect a native son to the presidency.

They can also look for more votes in Bogotá and the Pacific, two other regions where Petro is dominant. A small increase in turnout in the right places could help Petro.

Secondly, to keep as many Fico and Fajardo voters from voting for Rodolfo. This doesn’t necessarily mean having them vote for him, but turning them away from Rodolfo and towards abstention or the blank vote. It is crucial for Petro that Rodolfo’s 6 million and Fico’s 5 million do not add up to 11 million. An oft-cited figure is that Petro needs to keep vote transfers from Fico to Rodolfo under 80%.

Related to the above option is the possibility of weaning off a few first round Rodolfo voters from Rodolfo. This rarely happens anywhere in the world: those who vote for someone in the first round will obviously almost always vote for the same someone in the runoff. But Petro’s campaign thinks that a few rodolfistas will be unhappy to see Rodolfo accepting the support of loathed uribismo and traditional politicians. They might be on to something. Green senator-elect Jota Pe Hernández, the YouTuber (now ‘senator of the people’) who with nearly 190,000 votes won the most votes of any Green senatorial candidate in March, had endorsed Rodolfo Hernández right before the first round. However, just two days after the first round, he dis-endorsed Rodolfo, because he doesn’t want to be in the same boat as uribismo. How many ‘repentant’ rodolfistas could there be?

The responsible change vs. the jump into the void?

Petro didn’t see this runoff coming and it has forced him to quickly adapt and modify his message. He’s had some difficulties doing that. As Daniel Coronell wrote in his weekly column in Cambio, “Petro has not been able to interpret the new reality and compose himself”.

In his lengthy and somewhat convoluted victory speech, which came much later than expected, Petro started redefining himself as the cautious or responsible change, warning that “there are changes that are not changes: they are suicides”, implying that Rodolfo’s change would be a suicidal ‘jump into the void’. Senator Roy Barreras, the veteran politician who is now one of Petro’s main political operators, called Petro a ‘statesman’ and Rodolfo a ‘violent populist’.

In his victory speech, Petro didn’t mention Rodolfo by name but taunted him: saying that “corruption is not fought with TikTok phrases” and referencing Rodolfo’s corruption trial, his comments about women staying home and his old comment (lapsus?) about admiring Adolf Hitler.

On his side, Rodolfo Hernández’s victory speech was just as unconventional as his campaign. Early in the night, he read brief remarks (less than 4 minutes) in a Facebook Live video, filmed from the kitchen of his home in Piedecuesta. He didn’t organize or attend any victory party in a hotel ballroom — the only victory celebrations were spontaneous parades of his supporters in their cars and motorcycles on the streets of Bucaramanga. His remarks didn’t say anything about alliances for the second round; instead he kept saying what he had said for the entire campaign.

But petrismo has had a hard time letting go of the anti-uribismo that has been their main angle of attack since 2018. His campaign has tried to paint Rodolfo as an uribista — the Plan C of uribismo, as Univision journalist Félix de Bedout tweeted. Petro and others in his inner circle have sought to tie Rodolfo to uribismo.

It could work, as the case of Jota Pe Hernández shows. Some rodolfistas who voted for radical change might be disappointed to see old uribistas lining up behind him. However, Rodolfo is not an uribista and even if he is the ‘Plan C’ candidate of uribismo now, it is in very different circumstances to all past uribista candidates. Rodolfo Hernández got to the second round by relentlessly attacking Iván Duque and Fico Gutiérrez and criticizing the political establishment, which includes uribismo. Uribismo and other right-wingers are supporting him without getting anything in exchange, and only because he is now the only one who can defeat Petro (which has been Duque and Uribe’s key objective all along).

Rodolfo Hernández was quick to deflect petrismo’s attacks, posting a Twitter thread listing his 20 differences with uribismo:

In his thread, Rodolfo criticizes neoliberal policies and comes out in favour of the peace agreement and talks with the ELN, reestablishing diplomatic relations with Venezuela, LGBT+ rights including marriage and adoption, abortion rights (as stipulated by the court), legalization of medical and recreational marijuana and declares his opposition to fracking and aerial aspersion with glyphosate. On some of these issues, like fracking or glyphosate, he’s flip-flopped and changed his position. On others, like abortion, he was previously unclear.

Uribistas will likely be disappointed to find out his 20 differences and his surprisingly progressive views on issues like drugs, abortion and LGBT+ rights. But Rodolfo calculates that they’ll have no real choice but to reluctantly vote for him in the end, to defeat Petro, and that he doesn’t need to spend any time pandering to them. The mere fact that a presidential candidate can now ignore uribismo while still needing their votes just shows how different 2022 is from all past elections.

Petro’s other main strategy against Rodolfo is to attack his machismo, in order to win over women voters. Rodolfo has made several controversial comments about women recently. Before the first round, he said that women should support their husband from home and that people don’t like women involved in government. Trying to clarify those comments, which he claims were taken out of context, he said that ideally women should focus on raising children at home and that women are currently “forced” to work. Rodolfo Hernández is not necessarily misogynistic but he has a very traditional (retrograde) and paternalistic view of women.

Petro and his allies attacked Rodolfo for these comments, and his campaign has a very powerful and credible advocate for feminism and gender equality, Francia Márquez. Rodolfo has tried to deflect this wave of attacks by posting a list of 10 proposals on women’s issues.

Although polling data is not particularly precise, some polls before the first round suggested that there was a significant gender gap, with Petro doing better with men. It is likely that Rodolfo did well with housewives and other women not in the labour market. There are very early indications that Petro’s strategy here might be working: some runoff polls show that the gender gap has been closed and that Rodolfo has lost votes with women.

Rodolfo, the only ‘true change’?

Meanwhile, Rodolfo Hernández has remained rather consistent in his message and strategy. His first round campaign was a success, and he’s confident he can win the runoff by repeating the same strategy.

Against Petro, Rodolfo Hernández claims to be the only ‘true’ change. In a Facebook Live after the first round, Rodolfo went after Petro’s weak flank: the presence of several controversial politicians in his campaign. He said that “change is not changing a few who are governing and putting Benedetti, Roy Barreras and Piedad Córdoba”. As La Silla Vacía said, these politicians are part of the ‘karma’ that Petro carries.

Roy Barreras, reelected to his fourth term in the Senate, and Armando Benedetti, leaving the Senate after four terms, are traditional politicians who were uribistas and santistas before defecting to the Pacto in 2020. Both are experienced political operators with insider knowledge of the dirty inner workings of Colombian politics, and both (particularly Benedetti) have their skeletons.

Barreras is one of Petro’s key political operators, in charge of ‘political relations’ — that is, making deals and alliances with other politicians. Benedetti coordinates Petro’s agenda. They have helped Petro’s campaign seal alliances with controversial political clans in the Caribbean region, most recently the Montes clan (led by parapolítico William Montes). Both are perceived as opportunistic traditional politicians, exactly the sort of people that Rodolfo loves to attack (even though he’s friends with quite a few of them himself).

Piedad Córdoba, an old figure of the Colombian left, is returning to the Senate, courtesy of her eighth place on the Pacto’s closed list in March. In addition to her old controversies, she has made embarrassing headlines for the Pacto this year. First, with new accusations concerning her close ties with the FARC guerrilla in the mid-2000s and allegations that she manipulated the release of hostages to score political points for her and Hugo Chávez. Most recently, just days before the first round, she was briefly detained at the airport in Honduras for carrying an undeclared $68,000 in cash. Having become such a liability to the campaign, she has been sidelined and told to stay quiet — but it doesn’t change the fact that she given a top spot on the Pacto’s closed list for Senate.

In short, Petro has managed to build a much broader coalition this year, but some of his new allies in this coalition, while they may be valuable to him, have become real liabilities in a campaign which has become a competition for ‘real change’.

The game of alliances

Runoff campaigns anywhere in the world are a game of alliances.

Rodolfo Hernández received the support of Fico Gutiérrez, Enrique Gómez and, most recently, John Milton Rodríguez.

Most of uribismo followed in Fico’s footsteps, with public endorsements from prominent CD senators María Fernanda Cabal and Paloma Valencia. In general, he is now the ‘least worst’ option for all those who want to defeat Gustavo Petro — a broad group which includes uribismo, Iván Duque, right-wingers, some centrists, many traditional politicians, the Christian evangelical right and a lot of businessmen and investors. Of course, they’re not all particularly enthusiastic about him and probably are slightly worried about the uncertainty surrounding his actual policies if elected (and his impulsive and unpredictable behaviour). But they prefer the ‘incognito’ of Rodolfo to the known ‘danger’ of Petro. In some cases, Rodolfo’s new supporters (like Fico) had been very critical of him, and called him all sorts of things, until just a few weeks ago.

Rodolfo Hernández has accepted the endorsements he has received from all sides. He said that he gratefully receives the support that anyone offers him, but that his “only alliance is with the Colombian people”. In response to a Twitter video from Fico declaring his support for Rodolfo, the candidate replied that he accepts the votes of all Colombians and added “those who did not believe in change have begun to believe”.

In addition, he has warned that he doesn’t owe anything to anyone and that he wouldn’t be repaying favours to anyone if elected. In other wards, a warning to the politicians now supporting him that they shouldn’t expect bureaucratic ‘quotas’ or ‘marmalade’ (pork-barrel spending) from him.

However, we all know that what is said during a campaign and what actually happens once in power are quite different. Iván Duque, in 2018, also promised to govern without bureaucratic ‘quotas’ from parties that supported him and without marmalade. Facing great difficulties to get his agenda passed in 2018 and 2019, by 2020 he relented and gradually gave ‘quotas’ to other parties in his cabinet and quietly gave out more marmalade to congressional allies. In 2003, after the failure of his referendum against politiquería, Álvaro Uribe began to govern with the support of traditional politicians in Congress. To the point that in 2006, as the parapolítica scandal was hitting Congress, he asked allied congressmen to continue voting with the government as long as they weren’t in jail…

The traditional/neo-traditional parties — the Liberals, Conservatives, La U, CR as well as the uribista CD — did not formally endorse anyone. However, it’s no secret that most of their caucuses will support Rodolfo Hernández. While some individual congressmen have openly endorsed Rodolfo, like Dilian Francisca Toro’s senators-elect Norma Hurtado and Juan Carlos Garcés in the Valle, others have not publicly staked out a position: given the disrepute of ‘traditional politics’, they understood that it’s better for them and Rodolfo if they don’t openly take sides.

The centre splits up (again)

While the right has mostly gone over to Rodolfo, the centre — or, more accurately, the Centro Esperanza — has split between Petro and Rodolfo.

Quickly, Petro publicly welcomed the endorsements of Fajardo’s running-mate Luis Gilberto Murillo as well as former presidential candidate Alejandro Gaviria (former health minister), former interior minister Guillermo Rivera, Green senator-elect Ariel Ávila, former Nuevo Liberalismo senatorial top candidate Mabel Lara and outgoing Green senators Antonio Sanguino and Iván Marulanda. The emblematic Antanas Mockus, the former mayor of Bogotá and 2010 Green presidential candidate, also endorsed Petro.

Many noted that Petro rallied several former santista cabinet ministers (Murillo, Gaviria, Rivera as well as former labour minister Griselda Restrepo) to his side, in addition to the former santistas he already had (Roy Barreras, campaign manager Alfonso Prada). On June 11, they were joined by former interior minister Juan Fernando Cristo and several members of his movement En Marcha which was part of the centrist coalition. As interior minister during much of Santos’ second term, Cristo was one of the main forces behind much of the government’s political agenda.

Getting the support of former santistas is all part of his campaign’s strategy to paint Petro as the ‘responsible change’ as opposed to the ‘jump into the void’ with Rodolfo, as the cautious institutional option against the irresponsible populist.

On the other hand, on June 1, retiring fajardista Valle del Cauca Green rep. Catalina Ortiz endorsed Rodolfo. Ortiz has long been critical of petristas and the left in Valle, most notably Cali mayor Jorge Iván Ospina (who supports Petro although his support was a bit unwelcome). Indeed, two weeks or so after her endorsement, Ortiz quit the Greens and resigned her seat, saying that she didn’t want to be in the same party as Ospina (as she looks towards a potential mayoral candidacy in Cali in 2023).

Sergio Fajardo got a lot of flack for his indecision in 2018, when he voted blank and went off to see the whales the weekend before the runoff, so he was keen to be more decisive in his post-election behaviour this time around. After the two attempts to form an alliance with Rodolfo before the first round, it was not surprising that Fajardo — accompanied by former presidential candidates Carlos Amaya and Jorge Enrique Robledo, as well as former interior minister Juan Fernando Cristo — met with Rodolfo to work on a ‘programmatic agreement’.

Fajardo and the centrists hoped to get Rodolfo to beef up or modify his platform in exchange for a full endorsement. According to La Silla Vacía, they had six main conditions. These were no alliances with uribismo, a guarantee for gender equality policies, a realistic tax reform (Rodolfo is selling the myth that no tax reform is necessary if you just miraculously abolish corruption), defend the institutions (referring to Rodolfo’s idea to declare a state of internal disturbance in August to rule by decree for 90 days, and then dare the Constitutional Court to tell him he couldn’t do that), good international relations (Rodolfo wants to nearly half of the embassies) and peace negotiations with the ELN (which Rodolfo supports but doesn’t want to ‘waste time and money’ on). None of these conditions appeared particularly problematic for Rodolfo, who also seemed to eager to get Fajardo’s endorsement.

However, late on June 4, Rodolfo abruptly called off the talks with Fajardo and others, calling them a mere courtesy whose time had passed. He said that they were trying to change his winning platform. Fajardo, Amaya, Cristo and Robledo had no choice but to accept that negotiations were closed. A lot of right-wingers, critics of the centrist coalition and ultimately Rodolfo himself had pointed out the arrogance of a candidate who won 885,000 votes trying to ‘impose’ his own platform on a candidate who won 6 million votes.

It gives an interesting indication of how Rodolfo would govern: willing to talk with others and listen to them, but ultimately making the decision on his own, somewhat impetuously.

After being dumped by Rodolfo, the old centrist coalition divided further. Sergio Fajardo said he wouldn’t vote for Petro. It is clear that Fajardo holds grudges against Petro and his social media barras bravas for the way they vilified him for his 2018 blank vote and going to see the whales. Petro chimed in to say that he would have supported Fajardo against Rodolfo.

On June 9, Fajardo finally announced that just like 4 years ago, he’d vote blank. This time, he made sure to justify and explain his decision. Basically, he said that both candidates are populists. Against Petro, he made clear that he holds grudges against him and his supporters for the way that they dragged him through the mud since 2018, accusing him of being a closeted uribista, but he also criticized Petro’s todo vale willingness to ally with corrupt politicians and said that he proposes ‘impossible programs’ that he’d be unable to deliver just like in Bogotá as mayor. Against Rodolfo, he said that he rudely and abruptly cut off talks with him and that he doesn’t know the country and lacks political experience.

Carlos Amaya had said before the first round that he would support Rodolfo against Petro in the runoff. After the first round, he feigned uncertainty, to milk the moment for all its worth. He asked for divine guidance, but ultimately Amaya endorsed Rodolfo Hernández on June 7. Some of his allies in Boyacá, like Green senator-elect Carolina Espitia, had already endorsed Rodolfo before May 29. Boyacá gave over 51% of the vote to Rodolfo.

Unlike a lot of other politicians who endorsed Rodolfo, both Ortiz and Amaya have actively campaigned for him and appeared alongside him. Ortiz has campaigned for him in Cali and participated in a discussion on women’s issues with him on social media. Amaya endorsed him in-person from Vichada and he participated in a social media discussion on agriculture with Rodolfo.

The Nuevo Liberalismo formally announced its support for Rodolfo after some sort of ‘internal consultation’ in which W Radio says 90% were in favour of supporting Rodolfo. Juan Manuel Galán said that the party believed Rodolfo represented a ‘centrist emotion’. Outgoing senator Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, who has it out for Galán after they blocked him from running for president with the party, said the internal vote was probably the Galán family dinner table. Lara claims that the Nuevo Liberalismo endorsed Rodolfo in exchange for one ministry, money for Carlos Fernando Galán’s mayoral campaign in 2023 and the family foundation and help to repay the debts of their failed campaign. Gustavo Petro has also bought in to this story, claiming that he refused the proposals they made to him — to support him in exchange for his help repaying their debts and for Carlos Fernando to be mayor in 2023. The party and the Galán family emphatically denied having asked Petro for favours.

Jorge Enrique Robledo, who hates Petro and would rather eat broken glass than ever vote for Petro, has said he would cast a blank vote, as in 2018. His party, Dignidad, also decided not to endorse anyone. Robledo’s intense hatred of Petro now borders on the irrational and he has engaged in some very bizarre domestic birtherism, arguing that Petro wasn’t really born in Ciénaga de Oro (Córdoba) as he claims but rather in Zipaquirá (Cundinamarca) where he grew up.

Green senator Angélica Lozano, the wife of Bogotá mayor Claudia López, endorsed Petro on June 12.

Petro and the left had been among the most vocal opponents of López’s administration in the capital, and she had become quite critical of him (she accused him of promoting violence during the 2021 protests), but before the campaign heated up, Petro and López sealed a sort of non-aggression pact in late 2021, before relations between the two reached a point of no return. Before the first round, López had already gained a foothold in Petro’s campaign: her chief of staff, Luis Ernesto Gómez, resigned to join Petro’s campaign, days before the first round. Nevertheless, La Silla Vacía, on May 25, speculated that López and Lozano were likelier to support Rodolfo in the runoff, in part because of the lingering bad blood and old grudges between them (what Lozano considers the aggressions and hostility of the left).

Dirty campaigning

Is there ever such a thing as a clean and positive campaign? Candidates around the world pretend that they don’t like negative, dirty campaigning but they all go negative and dirty nonetheless.

In April, Petro committed to a ‘manifesto for a clean campaign’ and his campaign has often talked about a ‘politics of love’, even streaming a promotional documentary with that title.

From June 8, Semana and other media outlets began publishing the ‘Petrovideos’, leaked video recordings of campaign meetings in which the main protagonist is Roy Barreras, Petro’s ruthless political operator. The videos were recorded by someone with access to the campaign, and were edited and cut (perhaps removing necessary context) before being leaked or published in the media.

The videos talk about all sort of stuff, some of which are more scandalous than others. Petro appears in some videos but doesn’t say much in any of them. Some of the highlights of the videos include:

• Barreras admits that people from the Pacto visited the jails and the ‘extraditables’ section offering non-extradition — that is, Petro’s brother and Piedad Córdoba’s visits to La Picota prison in April and their meetings with prisoners there. Barreras talks about the need to manage a ‘controlled explosion’ of this revelation in the media. Barreras called Petro’s brother a güevón (idiot/stupid). The Picota visits became a major scandal for Petro’s campaign around Easter, but did not really hurt his standing. After Noticias Caracol revealed the scandal in April, Petro’s campaign denied having been aware of the visits and attacked the Caracol journalist, but the Petrovideos reveal that the campaign was aware of the visits and knew about the information that the media had.
• Petro’s digital comms adviser Sebastián Guanumen planned a dirty campaign against Fico, speaking about the need to generate negative content and rumours about Fico on social media and WhatsApp/Telegram, including fake news.
• Barreras talks about getting campaign funds from Supergiros (a money transfer company with 10,000 offices in Colombia), which is perhaps the biggest legal liability in the video because the law bans corporate campaign donations. The company has denied contributing to the campaign.
• Sometime in the summer of 2021, Barreras said that Alejandro Gaviria’s incipient candidacy was a threat and discussed the campaign strategy’s to attack Gaviria and divide the centre, including by using Fajardo, either propping him up or weakening him, to force him into an alliance. Semana’s editorializing claimed that Gaviria (who endorsed Petro in the runoff) was used to betray Fajardo or was a petrista Trojan Horse in the centrist coalition. Gaviria and his wife have denied this, saying that there was no betrayal.
• Barreras mentions the existence of a secret agreement with former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, the natural leader of Cambio Radical, to block the party’s endorsement of Fico, giving Petro’s campaign more leeway in working with individual members of CR.
• The very wealthy Barranquilla businessman Christian Daes, close business ally of the Char clan and owner of Tecnoglass, allegedly financed Petro’s campaign. He paid the salary of a staff member that the campaign later wanted to fire. Daes, one of the most prominent Colombian businessmen, was recently the focus of an investigation by Hindenburg Research, revealing his family’s past ties to the Cali cartel in the 1990s, accounting irregularities and undisclosed family business transactions.

The videos clearly show that Petro’s ‘manifesto for a clean campaign’ and ‘politics of love’ were duplicitous lies and that his campaign engaged in dirty tricks, negative campaigning and potentially campaign finance violations. However, while unpleasant, this shouldn’t really be surprising to anyone who knows about politics in, well, any country. Of course elections and politics are dirty and nasty in South America!

Roy Barreras, the man at the centre of nearly all the videos, said that there was nothing to be ashamed of. Petro asked Semana to publish all recordings and videos they have, claiming that he has nothing to hide and did nothing illegal but that the videos released are edited and taken out of context. Barreras, Petro and most of the left said that this was Watergate — that the campaign was the target of illegal government espionage/wiretapes (chuzadas), obviously trying to link it back to the Uribe government’s DAS chuzadas scandal.

One voice of dissent, however, was Pacto senator Gustavo Bolívar, who tweeted that he felt ashamed and that there were people who ‘hurt more than they help’, a comment clearly targeted at Barreras. Bolívar wasn’t particularly happy to see Roy Barreras land in the Pacto and take a leading role as campaign strategist/congressional operator, as Bolívar had been Petro’s leading ally and defender in Congress since 2018. Because of the scandal, Barreras, in his words, ‘temporarily isolated’ himself from the campaign in the final days.

Separately from the Petrovideos, on June 15 the right-wing online media site Los Irreverentes published the recording of a virtual meeting in which Petro’s wife Verónica Alcocer said that all female journalists climbed up the ranks in the media by getting romantically involved with their male bosses. Alcocer, who has played an unusually important role in the campaign for a candidate’s spouse, later apologized to female journalists who were offended by her remarks.

Rodolfo Hernández’s reaction to the Petrovideos was very much over the top. From Miami, he said that the videos showed that Petro and the politicians around him were a ‘criminal gang’ with no limits and willing to do anything. From this, he drew the conclusion that his own life was at risk, implied that he would be stabbed and announced that he was cancelling all public events until June 19. Initially he said that, for security reasons, he would not return to Colombia, but he quickly changed plans, after the interior minister guaranteed his security, and returned home.

The Petrovideos are somewhat scandalous and reflect poorly on Petro’s campaign. This hasn’t been a clean campaign, and the level of political debate has been horrible. However, the media also has its share of responsibility. A lot of the media coverage in this election has been one-sided or biased in favour of certain candidates, and the media has clearly preferred sensationalism and chasing stupid stories to facilitating a real debate of ideas (granted, its performance in 2018 was not much better).

Semana, which used to be a very reputable and impartial news magazine, has, under new ownership since 2019-2020, moved to the right and replaced quality journalism with clickbait digital media, fearmongering, disinformation, sensationalism, thinly-veiled editorializing and yellow journalism. It has done double time with sensationalistic headlines about the Petrovideos being the ‘biggest scandal’ since the Proceso 8.000 (it isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination).

Semana’s coverage of the elections has been widely criticized. Rodolfo’s campaign admitted that Semana’s November 2021 front cover with the title ¡Despegó Rodolfo! (Rodolfo takes off!) and showing Rodolfo on a rocket (reporting on a CNC poll which, for the first time, placed him second) was a very important boost to the campaign. Semana proudly relayed that comment. In a recent column in Cambio, Daniel Coronell (famously fired from Semana in 2020) alleged that Semana’s new owners, the Gilinski group, provided favourable coverage to the government in exchange for the government’s support for their hostile takeover bids against Nutresa and Grupo Sura in 2021. Coronell also argues that they used the magazine to boost the images of Petro’s strongest rivals since 2021: Fico and Rodolfo.

Rodolfo has also been the target of unfair media coverage. The media has wasted time and been extremely insensitive in playing games with his missing daughter (presumed dead), Juliana (kidnapped by the ELN in 2004). Cambio published an article saying that her ID card was still valid and that she had assets in her name. Perhaps Rodolfo has ‘asked for it’ by bringing her up and maybe he’s used his family tragedy for political gain, but obviously the media playing stupid and pointless games with a tragedy is extremely insensitive.

To debate or not to debate?

There were a lot (too many) of debates before the first round. Petro didn’t attend most of them, until the three debates organized in the last week. He was criticized for not attending debates, while he wanted to avoid being the focus of all attacks as the frontrunner (at the time). Rodolfo Hernández attended some of them, but did not attend the last three debates in the final week — instead he asked himself questions on Facebook Live.

After the first round, Petro invited Rodolfo to a debate. After some hesitation, Rodolfo said that he would not attend any debates, arguing that he’d explain his positions in interviews and on his social media. Petro, on the other hand, very much wanted to debate Rodolfo, because Petro knows his files quite well, is a good public speaker and is confident that he could beat Rodolfo — making him look unprepared, inexperienced and unknowledgeable about policy issues. For those same reasons, Rodolfo didn’t want a debate.

Rodolfo was criticized for not accepting to participate in a debate and ‘hiding’ from interviews (his team interrupted an interview with Telemundo in Miami).

Two lawyers presented a tutela (legal mechanism to ensure rapid protection of fundamental rights, similar to an injunction) to demand a debate. On June 15, the Superior Tribunal of Bogotá ordered the organization of a debate on public television (RTVC). The ruling gave the candidates 48 hours to jointly request and schedule a debate.

It wouldn’t be a Colombian election without a court making a somewhat weird judgement and the entire matter once again devolving into a fight for lawyers over the wording of very vague and poorly-written laws. No laws mandate debates, a point reiterated by the CNE, so nobody can force and drag any candidate into a debate. Rodolfo said that he’d rather be sent to jail than be forced to agree to the terms of a debate with Petro.

However, on June 16, hours before the court-ordered 48 hour period was to end, Rodolfo posed a set of maximalist conditions to a debate: that it be held in Bucaramanga, setting a list of topics obviously biased against Petro (‘dirty campaigning’ and ‘political alliances’…), 5 minute answers per candidate (excessively long for a debate) and choosing a handpicked list of debate moderators, three women journalists known for their anti-Petro views (Semana’s Vicky Dávila, La FM’s Darcy Quinn and RCN’s Jessica de la Peña).

Although he said Rodolfo’s conditions were provocative, Petro accepted his conditions and signed off by saying “see you in Bucaramanga”. Petro did so to call Rodolfo’s bluff. Indeed, just as the court order’s time limit expired, Rodolfo shut off the possibility of any debate. Reading off a paper on social media, he very disingenuously argued that Petro’s expression ‘see you in Bucaramanga’ was a “response that terminated any possibility of following the judicial order” because it did not specify a date, time, venue for a debate.

The debate kerfuffle has allowed Petro to present himself as the ‘responsible statesman’ who respects judicial decisions and defends justice. In response to his opponent, Petro tweeted that “without judges, there’d only be dictatorship and violence”.

A close finish

In the final stretch of the campaign, Petro has worked to drive home his message that he is the responsible statesman whose time has come. On June 14, he released a 15 minute ‘message to the nation’ which is an appeal for his vision of change and a finely-tuned presentation of him as a safe and responsible option. He said that the choice on June 19 is between a ‘deceitful path’ down the same path of a weak and exclusionary democracy, and his path offering to ‘open the windows’ to a new beginning with dignity for all.

He promised to govern with “absolute respect” for the constitution, the laws and separation of powers (after his ‘scary’ proposal for a constituent assembly, à la Maduro, in 2018). He reiterated his old proposal for a consensual ‘great national agreement’ with all sectors of society. He invited those who voted for someone else on May 29 to join him to ‘change what is bad’.

Finally, he clearly tried to allay common fears about him and his true intentions by presenting five ‘unnegotiable and fundamental guarantees’: that he would not seek reelection (banned by the constitution since 2015), his committment with justice is unbreakable and that he would not seek revenge, that he would work relentlessly to overcome the social and economic crisis through ‘austerity’ without imposing new charges on citizens, that he would respect private property and would not expropriate and that his government would fight against corruption.

While working to appear statesmanlike, during the runoff campaign Petro has also tried to appear closer to the people. 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.

In the field, Petro’s campaign has been more conventional. He’s relied on his large political base to campaign, distribute leaflets, refine local talking points and organize GOTV operations. In Colombia, GOTV often means organizing transportation for your voters in marginalized urban areas and in rural areas. For this, Petro’s campaign has turned to traditional political clans: La Silla Vacía reported that they have allied with the infamous corrupt Ñoños clan in Sahagún (Córdoba), the former ‘kings of marmalade’ during the Santos administration.

Rodolfo Hernández, on the other hand, has stuck to what worked for him in the first round: little campaigning of his own, no mass public rallies, no debates, little travel (seems like most of his travel has been to Miami!) and few social media or television ads. His campaign has remained unconventional, relying on the ‘multilevel’ online (WhatsApp) campaign groups to find votes and organize his supporters.

His runoff campaign has been difficult. Suddenly, all the spotlights were on Rodolfo and he faced intense scrutiny. In the first round, he had faced very little scrutiny and largely got a free ride from the media. His gaffes, mistakes and controversies were jokingly dismissed as the funny antics of a crazy old man on TikTok. However, in the runoff, he was on the defensive, needing to put out fires and do damage control for his past controversies and gaffes which came back to haunt him: not knowing about Vichada, not knowing what the Escazú agreement is, his comments about women, his corruption scandal and so forth.

He needed to apologize for his comments in an old radio interview in which he said that he accepts the support “of the Holy Virgin and all the prostitutes who live in the same neighbourhood”. He visited the Virgin of Chiquinquirá in Boyacá and Íngrid Betancourt filmed herself kneeling and asking the Virgin Mary for forgiveness (the video went viral).

Rodolfo stopped giving interviews after he stirred controversy by complaining about the “stupid questions” that journalists on Radio Nacional were asking him. He refused to go to any debate, which may give voters the impression that he was not prepared to face Petro, and instead explained his proposals in his own Facebook Live videos, sitting down with supporters instead of journalists.

He barely campaigned in Colombia: he went to Vichada (the department he didn’t know about but won with 39% of the vote in the first round) and Barranquilla airport. He then spent time in Miami, where he received the support of uribista groups in Florida, met with Republican congressmen, had an interview with Jaime Bayly and had the controversial interview with Telemundo that his team interrupted. He was in Miami when the Petrovideos scandal erupted and denounced an alleged plan to assassinate (stab) him. Upon his return to Colombia, he’s spent time at his house in Piedecuesta, meeting with young influencers, which led to another TikTok controversial video, this time of him walking shirtless in shorts (with a gold chain around his neck) with two young women. He met with local businessmen and sectoral lobbies in Bucaramanga, although he had them pay their own breakfast.

Just recently, Cambio revealed the video of a raunchy yacht party in Miami, apparently in October 2021, where Rodolfo is seen talking and dancing with a young woman and one of his sons is dancing with a girl in bikini. Cambio claims that the costs were paid for by Pfizer, and various company executives were on board. Pfizer has emphatically denied these claims, but Cambio has stood by its story.

Rodolfo’s campaign said that he was only briefly on the yacht, invited by some people. Rodolfo himself said that his opponents were desperate, complaining that they think it’s bad that he was on vacation in Miami in 2021 but don’t think the Petrovideos or prison visits are bad.

In sum, Rodolfo Hernández lost the initiative in the runoff and was on the defensive, whereas he was on the offensive in the first round. If he wins, he will have won with one of the weirdest, most unconventional campaigns.

The polls

The polls show that the runoff campaign was difficult for Rodolfo. Whereas he was expected to win given the first round numbers, all the polls have instead painted a much closer and very tense race.

Of the 7 pollsters releasing polls, two have Petro leading outside the margin of error, one has Rodolfo leading outside the margin of error and four have Rodolfo leading by less than the margin of error (statistical tie). Six of the pollsters have the race within less than 4%, only one (Yanhaas) is a clear outlier, with Petro ahead by 10. Yanhaas will either come out as the most prescient pollster, or the laughably wrong outlier.

Spanish pollster GAD3, recently accredited in Colombia, released a daily tracking poll. Its first poll, on May 31, had Rodolfo leading by 7.7%, but his lead was eaten away and Petro took the lead on June 7. Petro led by 1.8% on June 8, but by June 10, perhaps reflecting the Petrovideos scandal, Rodolfo regained a tiny lead (+0.8%).

The best pollsters in Colombia are Invamer, CNC and recently AtlasIntel (from their first round numbers). It is unfortunate that CNC’s last poll was released in early June. There have been rumours of a final CNC poll which was not published by Semana.

It is unclear what impact the Petrovideos may have had. Only four polls (AtlasIntel, Yanhaas, GAD3, Guarumo) may have been able to catch some of the impact. In Yanhaas, Petro gained 3 points from June 3 while Rodolfo lost 6. In Guarumo, which has a right-wing bias, Petro gained 3.2% from June 4 and Rodolfo gained 1.8%.

The blank vote is between 3% and 5% in most polls, except in Yanhaas which has it too high, at 13%. This suggests that there may some right-leaning undecided voters (not ‘pushed’ by Yanhaas as much, but pushed in other polls). In the 2018 runoff, the blank vote won 4.2%, less than expected by most polls, and will likely be somewhere around there this year. It is extremely unlikely that the blank vote will be in the high single digits, let alone over 10%.

GAD3’s tracking polls crosstabs should be interpreted with caution, but they show where Rodolfo has lost votes:

His significant losses have been among women (-9 between May 31 and June 8), Fico voters (-6), Fajardo voters (-17, small subsample alert!), employed workers (domestic workers and both private and public sector workers) and in the Caribbean (-18). As I wrote above, Rodolfo probably needs at least 80% of Fico’s first round voters to win — he’s getting exactly that (or a bit more, a bit less) in the polls (or was, last week). In Yanhaas’ outlier poll, Rodolfo only has 67% of Fico’s voters.

What may have happened in the final week, during the polling blackout? In the blackout before May 29, Rodolfo continued his surge which placed him second, because he clearly had the momentum and his wave was building. It is unlikely that Rodolfo had similar momentum in the final week: again, his runoff campaign was under a very different set of circumstances. However, with the Petrovideos scandal, it is also quite likely that Petro had no momentum (or negative momentum) in the final week. Petro may have been hurt by the Petrovideos, while Rodolfo may have been hurt by his melodramatic response to the Petrovideos, the debate kerfuffle, avoiding interviews and the final controversies (Virgin Mary prostitute insults, yacht party, shirtless TikTok video…). It is possible that there has been a big swing in somebody’s favour in the final week, but it’s tough to say for sure who may have benefited from it. It is also possible that the runoff margin will not be all the close in the end.

Who will win? Nobody really knows for sure — it’s possible that even the campaigns themselves are unsure.

I believe that the numbers and fundamentals still favour Rodolfo. He still has the easiest path to victory: win most of Fico’s votes and make sure Petro doesn’t get new voters.

Petro still has a more difficult path, if you just consider the hard numbers: he needs to prevent Rodolfo from getting most of Fico and Fajardo’s voters and he must work to increase turnout in the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, he must also ensure that he gets at least a 20% margin out of the region, which would be enough to counterbalance Rodolfo’s expected big margins in Antioquia and the central Andean region. This is not impossible, and Petro has a strong campaign apparatus that makes it possible.

Most people would agree that this will be an extremely close election, won by just a few hundred thousand votes. The closest runoff election in Colombia was 1994, which was decided by just 157,000 votes. As I said, the blank votes will probably he around 3–5%, like in 2018. The blank votes have no legal impact in the runoff (if they win, the election wouldn’t be repeated), so it is a purely symbolic vote of discontent with the choices offered.

Given the intensity and closeness of the election, it is possible that turnout will be higher than in the first round (55%). Lower and higher turnout could favour either candidate: Rodolfo would like lower turnout in the Caribbean and other places where Petro is strong, Petro would like lower turnout in Rodolfo’s strongholds (generally high turnout regions) and among Fico voters, but Petro also wants higher turnout in the Caribbean.

However, numbers and fundamentals may still be wrong. Politics and elections aren’t just hard numbers: they’re emotions, feelings and instincts that are difficult to capture and quantify.

If the election is particularly close after such a tense campaign, there is a real possibility that the loser (particularly if it is Petro) will not accept the outcome and there is a real risk of some degree of post-election protests or violence. The electoral authorities (Registraduría), on thin ice after the March elections fiasco, need to manage the runoff and the results with absolute transparency: they did a fine job in the first round, but that was in spite of them doing little to improve transparency and trust.

Right until the end, the 2022 Colombian elections will have been a wild ride. Regardless of who wins, Colombia will enter an unpredictable period, having voted for ‘change’ in the first round and then deciding what flavour of change it wanted in the runoff.