Colombian congressional and presidential elections - March 13/May 29/June 19, 2022

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Petro's lead grew to 1.8 in the tracking today - 48.5 to 46.7 and the blank vote down a bit to 4.9. Just out of the poll's margin of error too.

BUT last night Semana (far-right rag and outlet of sensationalism and yellow journalism now unfortunately) and other media published a number of leaked 'Petrovideos', which are video recordings of campaign meetings in which the main protagonist is Roy Barreras. The videos talk about all sort of stuff, some of which are scandalous and other things which shouldn't surprise anyone who knows anything about politics. Petro is seen in one of the videos but he doesn't say anything in any of them.

These things include:

a) Barreras admits that people from the Pacto visited the jails and the 'extraditables' section offers non-extradition - ie. Petro's brother and Piedad Córdoba's visits to La Picota in April and their meetings with prisoners there. Barreras talks about the need to manage a 'controlled explosion' of this revelation in the media.

b) Planning a 'dirty war' against Fico, trying to generate content and rumours, including fake news, on social media and WhatsApp/Telegram, to attack and discredit Fico.

c) Roy Barreras talking 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.

d) Videos where Roy Barreras talks about the campaign's strategy to divide the centre. He talks about attacking Alejandro Gaviria's incipient candidacy, when he was seen as a threat, and using Fajardo - either propping him up or weakening him - to force him into an alliance.

e) Mentions of a deal with Vargas Lleras where he blocked CR from formally endorsing Fico, giving the Pacto more leeway to work with people from CR.

Nothing particularly pleasant, but if you think politics and elections are clean in South America, you probably also believe in unicorns.

These videos were recorded by someone, so it is clear that the source was someone with access to the campaign. The campaign now seems quite sure that more videos are coming: Barreras said that there's nothing to be ashamed of and Petro is asking 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 (they certainly are edited). For example, Petro insists that they knew nothing about deals with 'extraditables'.

Barreras, Petro and the left/Pacto say that this is Watergate and government espionage/wiretaps (chuzadas), obviously trying to link it back to the Uribe government's DAS chuzadas scandal. The left is outraged at what they consider illegal espionage and infiltration of the campaign. However, one voice of dissent on the left is Gustavo Bolívar, who tweeted that he felt ashamed and that there were people who hurt more than they help -- clearly targeted at Roy Barreras. Bolívar wasn't particularly happy to see Roy Barreras land in the Pacto and take a leading role as campaign strategist/congressional operator/political operator, as Bolívar had been Petro's leading ally and defender in Congress since 2018. Basically, there are civil wars in the Pacto and people jostling for power (future appointments if they win?).

Will this hurt Petro? Nobody really knows. The Picota visits were probably more scandalous than this and the campaign badly fumbled it, but Petro didn't lose anything (might even have gained a bit in the polls at the time), even though polls were showing that his social pardon stuff was not well received. I wouldn't be so surprised if this didn't really hurt Petro, but it's possible that it could hurt him given the timing and massive media feeding frenzy it has started.

Semana is doing double time with sensationalistic yellow journalism and misleading headlines. The same publication that sat on reports of the army's false positives 2.0, btw. The right is doing the usual rehearsed outrage routine, because of course they don't talk about dirty tricks in their campaign meetings.

Rodolfo Hernández, who is in Miami, has said that the videos show that Petro and the politicians around him are a criminal gang who are willing to do anything in order to win. He claims that his own life is now at risk and he has cancelled all public events until June 19.

Very normal times. I preferred it when Robledo was digging for Petro's birth certificate.

[Peeperkorn]

La Silla Vacia is also attacking Petro in reference to the petrovideos... I thought they were left leaning?

[Hash]

La Silla Vacia is also attacking Petro in reference to the petrovideos... I thought they were left leaning?

They're progressive-leaning on the whole, I'd say - liberal establishmentarian basically, and have never been too keen on Petro. They're still a balanced and independent source, one of the best ones in Colombia, especially when you compare to the mass media. Not a fan of them giving more and more space to opinion pieces, columnists and pundits especially when some of their columnists are pretty right-wing and often have tremendously bad takes (at least two of them had mini-meltdowns over Francia Márquez for the dumbest reasons). The Petrovideos are the big thing of the campaign now so every media is talking about it, but there's a difference in how it's being covered in, say, La Silla Vacía, compared to yellow journalism Semana/Vicky Dávila which thinks that they're Woodward and Bernstein uncovering the biggest scandal in Colombian history.

Today's GAD3 is again a tie: Petro 48.1 (-0.4), Rodolfo 46.8 (+0.1) and blank 5.1 (+0.2). Seems like the last sample in the rolling tracker (yesterday) may have reflected the Petrovideos and was not great for Petro.

'Gold standard' Invamer is out and has it within the margin of error as well: Rodolfo 48.2, Petro 47.2, blank 4.7 (margin of error 2.7%). The fieldwork was June 3-7 so it would not reflect any of the possible fallout from the Petrovideos.

[jaichind]

(Bloomberg) -- Rodolfo Hernandez has 48.2% support versus 46.5% for Gustavo Petro in a poll by Guarumo and EcoAnalitica published by El Tiempo newspaper.

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Final polls before the blackout:

GAD3: Rodolfo 47.9 (+1.1) Petro 47.1 (-1) Blank 5 (-0.1)
Guar(h)umo: Rodolfo 48.2 (+1.8) Petro 46.5 (+3.2) Blank 5.3 (-3.1)
Yanhaas: Petro 45 (+3) Rodolfo 35 (-6) Blank 13 (n/c) Undecideds 7 (+2)
AtlasIntel: Rodolfo 50.2 Petro 47.5 Blank 2.4

Not sure if CNC will have a final poll last minute tonight.

Yanhaas is really an outlier with such a big lead for Petro and high undecideds/blank vote. They're not a bad pollster and have been unfairly branded as bad because their last first round poll was 19 days before the election so largely pre-Rodolfo-mania, but I have the feeling that they'll be wrong here.

The final trends are hard to read: unfavourable to Petro in GAD3's tracker, favourable in both Guarumo (still trailing but now within MOE) and Yanhaas. It is unlikely that there will be a Rodolfo-surge in the last week as there was in the first round because his name recognition is very high now and he has been getting more scrutiny, which noticeably increased his unfavourables in Invamer.

In final endorsement news, I forgot to mention that Fajardo announced he's voting blank and this year went to great lengths to justify himself - basically saying that both are populists, that he holds grudges against Petro for the way he and his social media fanatics dragged him through the mud for 4 years for 2018/that Petro is a bad administrator, and that Rodolfo's platform is vague and that he rudely shut them off. Basically he wants to avoid a repeat of the whales incident.

Former Santos-II interior minister Juan Fernando Cristo and some members of his movement En Marcha (I know...), including three senators-elect, endorsed Petro.

[Mike88]

Bogotá Court demands that a debate between Petro and Hernández has to be held until tomorrow, but Hernández has appealed:

Rodolfo Hernández said that he was not going to debate in public with Gustavo Petro and it seems that he is going to take it to its last consequences. Even at the cost of breaking a court order. The Superior Court of Bogotá ordered on Wednesday to hold a face-to-face meeting between the presidential candidates in the following 48 hours, understanding that it was a citizen's right. Petro accepted at the time, but the construction businessman has requested a clarification of the ruling to delay compliance, which would already make the debate unfeasible for a matter of time. Everything indicates that Colombians will go to the polls on Sunday without seeing them face to face.
(...)

IMO, a Court demanding a public debate between candidates is a bit weird and misplaced, but could this hurt Hernández position and make him look bad?

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Hernández has accepted the debate, as long as it’s not in Bucaramanga (and fulfills some other conditions such as his own handpicked moderators).

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IMO, a Court demanding a public debate between candidates is a bit weird and misplaced, but could this hurt Hernández position and make him look bad?

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, and the CNE has apparently reiterated this point, so nobody can really force and drag any candidate to a debate, which is why I ultimately doubt this will happen (in like, what, basically 2 days?).

Petro, of course, very much wants to debate Rodolfo because Petro knows his files quite well, is a good public speaker and is confident that he could beat Rodolfo, and make Rodolfo looks very unprepared, inexperienced and unknowledgeable about stuff (question idea: ask Rodolfo about Guainía and Vaupés). For those reasons, Rodolfo doesn't want to debate and be challenged on his weaknesses.

Hernández has accepted the debate, as long as it’s not in Bucaramanga (and fulfills some other conditions such as his own handpicked moderators).

Rodolfo posed his very maximalist conditions to a debate - as long as it is in Bucaramanga (hopefully it's in his kitchen like his victory speech!), a list of topics including points which are obviously biased against Petro ('dirty campaigning' and 'alianzas politiqueras') and handpicked moderators who basically form a Petro haters club - the awful Vicky Dávila (who has turned Semana into a yellow journalism/sensationalism rag with a Petro hate obsession, plus Juan Manuel Santos really lives rent free in her head, it's ridiculous), the laughable Darcy Quinn (who also dislikes Petro and is not a very good journalist) and someone from RCN (clearly right-wing/anti-Petro channel). Petro's campaign accepted all these conditions, even though they're ridiculous (and handpicking moderators for a debate on the public television network is against press freedom, as the FLIP pointed out), but I have the feeling that they did so to call Rodolfo's bluff (indeed, Rodolfo's campaign didn't show up at a meeting with the two campaigns that Petro's campaign wanted).

Can I just say that that I really can't wait for this campaign to be over? It's been terrible. At least 2018 had funny moments like Vargas Lleras' bad temper or Duque being treated like a friendly guitar player and aspiring singer/dancer/musician by the media.

Shameless self-promo: please read my post analyzing the results in depth here: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/2022-colombian-presidential-elections-first-round-analysis-fbbb73154c01

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Indeed, it was a bluff. Rodolfo waited until the court order's time limit expired to shut off any possibility of a debate

https://twitter.com/BluRadioCo/status/1537577927520436225

Very disingenuously, he argues that Petro's expression 'see you in Bucaramanga' was a "response that terminated any possibility of following the judicial order" because it undefined without specifying date, time, venue for a debate.

Petro is quite comfortable now in looking (again) as the 'responsible statesman' by saying that he's just abiding by a court order and defending justice, and "without judges, there'd only be dictatorship and violence". Of course, a bit disingenuous coming from him as well, because he doesn't really respect justice when the decision doesn't favour him.

Again, it wouldn't have been a Colombian election without a bizarre judicial angle to it.

[Hash]

So this is tomorrow. I have posted my runoff preview on Medium here: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/2022-colombian-election-digest-vi-runoff-preview-de69d9549320. I encourage you to read it, or parts of it, to get an idea of how insane this election has been.

Who will win? I have no clue, honestly. On the one hand, the numbers and fundamentals still favour Rodolfo: his path to victory is the easiest and straightforward, he just needs about 80% of Fico's voters and he's golden, as long as Petro doesn't find new voters. On the other hand, even though Petro's campaign has gone with the 'we just need another 1.5 million votes and we're good' spin, finding those 1.5 million (or more, if turnout is higher) votes is still complicated just going by the hard numbers. Petro needs to increase turnout on the Caribbean coast (and make sure he wins by at least 20 there), and he needs to hope that vote transfers to Rodolfo are bad (and that Rodolfo bleeds a fair number of his own May 29 voters).

There are a bunch of unknowns: did the Petrovideos hurt? did Rodolfo's various controversies/nonsense/debate kerfuffle hurt? did Petro's campaign apparatus mobilize new voters in big numbers? will the blank votes/undecideds break late for somebody? what happened during the final week, the polling blackout? I'm not sure there are obvious answers to any of those questions, just speculation and impressions.

I agree with the consensus that it will be very close, closer than anything since 1998/1994. If that's the case, you better pray really hard that the Registraduría handles this very well and transparently so that the loser concedes (I can see Rodolfo conceding a close race somehow, but Petro might not concede a close race).

Somehow, my gut feeling is telling me that Petro will win (narrowly). I can't explain it well, and it's a gut feeling, so I may be all wrong. After all, what do I know?

Also, garbage fake news Semana is really going all out with their sh**t:

https://twitter.com/VickyDavilaH/status/1538113378123661312
You almost want Petro to win just so you can see the looks on the faces of the cohort of trash 'journalists' like Vicky Dávila and bargain bin right-wing pundits.

At the other end, I really recommend La Pulla's final video explaining the platforms of both candidates (if you have 30 minutes). A great example of actual journalism.

edit: the interior minister just said that the measure of electoral transparency cannot be "the one who wanted to win lost and the one who lost didn't win". So glad the Duque administration will just provide amazing content until the final day!

[jaichind]

I guess I will ask the standard questions of

a) When do polls close?
b) Any exit polls to be expected when polls close?
c) Links to results and/or live streams?

[Hash]

Polls close at 4pm local time. There are no exit polls, but the preconteo results start coming in quickly 15 minutes later, updated every 5 minutes.

Noticias Caracol and other TV channels will have livestreams on YouTube. Results will be available on the Registraduría's website.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Colombia can write history today. If Petro would be elected, i think Colombia would be the country with my fav government leader worldwide, and could jump big into becoming one of my favourite countries. Go Petro!

[CumbrianLefty]

I wouldn't get your hopes up, given all past precedent here.

[Mike88]

I guess I will ask the standard questions of

a) When do polls close?
b) Any exit polls to be expected when polls close?
c) Links to results and/or live streams?

a) 4pm (10pm London time)
b) No exit polls
c) An official link to results will be available here, I assume: https://registraduria.gov.co/

Live TV streams:

Canal 13

RCN TV

Caracol TV

[Sebastiansg7]

Well, it's been raining in most of the country during this afternoon, this might depress the turnout.

[Walmart_shopper]

My guess is Petro 52.5, Rodolfo 47.5.

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4.47 reporting:

Rodolfo 49.93
Petro 48.08

The majority of votes are from expats, where 70% of votes have been reported. Rodolfo unsurprisingly winning there.

[Red Velvet]

4,47% counted

Hernandez 49,93%
Petro 48,08%

I don’t get where are the other 2% based on the website lol

[Hash]

Blank votes are counted as valid votes in Colombia.

[Hash]

Petro grabs a narrow lead with 10% reporting.

[Walmart_shopper]

Almost 10 percent of the vote is in...

Petro leads 49.89 to 48.02.

[Hash]

Judging from Caldas, where 20% is in, it will be very very very tight but my gut feeling is that Rodolfo needs to be a doing bit better than he currently is. Let's see...

[Walmart_shopper]

Does anyone know who will most likely win Chapinero in Bogota?

[Walmart_shopper]

Almost 20% in...

Petro 49.73
Rodolfo 48.06.