“n
Bogotá.- The result of Sunday’s presidential runoff in Colombia, in which far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won with a 0.96-point lead over leftist Iván Cepeda, is the narrowest in the country’s memory, according to historical data from the National Registry, the entity that organizes the elections.
n” “nDe la Espriella, from the Defenders of the Homeland movement, won with 12,959,542 votes, equivalent to 49.66%, while Cepeda, from the Historic Pact, the party of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, received 12,708,712 ballots (48.70%), according to the preliminary count by the National Registry at 99.99%.
n” “nIn votes, the difference was 250,830 in favor of De la Espriella, a result that will only be considered final once the ongoing scrutiny concludes, a process that is well underway and should finish this very week.
n” “nUntil yesterday, the most contested presidential election had been that of 1970, in which the conservative Misael Pastrana defeated Gustavo Rojas Pinilla by a margin of 1.6 percentage points, a general who had held the Presidency between 1953 and 1957 and who decided to run for office for the National Popular Alliance (Anapo), which was nationalist in nature and an alternative to the traditional parties.
More Read
You can also read: Cepeda lashes out at De la Espriella
n” “nThat election was marked by allegations of fraud in favor of Misael Pastrana, father of the also former president Andrés Pastrana, and from the dissatisfaction with the result emerged the M-19 guerrilla group, of which the current president Petro was a part in his youth.
n” “nThe 1994 election results were also narrow, in which the Liberal Ernesto Samper defeated the Conservative Pastrana Jr. in the second round by a margin of 2.11 percentage points.
n” “nIn the 2022 elections, Petro defeated the right-wing independent Rodolfo Hernández in the runoff by a margin of 3.13 points and a difference of 711,000 votes, almost triple the lead De la Espriella had over Cepeda.
