Iván Cepeda leads Colombia's presidential race with roughly 38 percent to 44.6 percent in recent polls, putting the May 31 vote on track to reshape Bogotá's relationship with Washington. The contest has narrowed to Cepeda, the candidate backed by outgoing President Gustavo Petro and the Historic Pact coalition, and two center-right challengers, Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia. Polling firms Invamer, Guarumo and Ecoanalítica place de la Espriella around 23.9 percent to 31.6 percent and Valencia roughly 14 percent to 22.8 percent. No contender appears likely to clear the 50 percent threshold for an outright win, making a June 21 runoff between the top two the probable outcome.
Iván Cepeda leads the polls while his two center-right rivals promise a harder security line and a restoration of closer security ties with the United States.
Polls and the candidates
Polling firms Invamer, Guarumo and Ecoanalítica show Cepeda ahead, with support ranging roughly from 38 percent to 44.6 percent in recent summaries of those surveys. Abelardo de la Espriella trails in the 23.9 percent to 31.6 percent band, and Paloma Valencia sits between about 14 percent and 22.8 percent. Most other candidates register below 3 percent, making a runoff the likely outcome because no contender appears poised to pass the 50 percent threshold required for an outright win.
Cepeda has vowed to continue President Petro's "total peace" approach, pursuing negotiated settlements with armed groups involved in drug trafficking. That policy has been controversial: several talks have stalled and violence has surged in parts of the country, a dynamic Cepeda's campaign must address if it hopes to translate poll leads into votes.
De la Espriella and Valencia have run on clear contrasts. Both pledge a tougher security posture, promising a military crackdown on criminal groups and a restoration of closer security cooperation with the United States. Their messaging has found an audience among voters alarmed by rising crime, and the campaigns have staged appearances under heightened protection. De la Espriella has appeared at recent events behind bulletproof glass, a visible sign of the campaign's security concerns.
Security on Election Day and campaign violence
The Colombian government has deployed a rare security operation for the vote. Authorities said 246,000 members of the security forces will be mobilized and 386 municipalities have been placed under alert to protect voters and candidates.
The scale of the deployment underlines how central security has become to the campaign.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has expressed concern over incidents of political violence during the campaign and urged Colombian authorities to guarantee safety in the election's final stage. Campaigns themselves have tightened protective measures after a candidate was fatally shot at a rally in June 2025, an episode that showed the lethal stakes of Colombia's politics and pushed security even higher on the agenda.
Beyond the immediate campaign, background conditions make the choices before voters. The 2016 peace agreement with the former FARC guerrillas promised a new era, but dissident factions and emergent criminal networks have expanded into vacuums left by the demobilized fighters. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that armed conflict in Colombia during the previous year affected civilians at the highest level in a decade, a statistic that frames the competing security strategies offered by the candidates.
Drugs policy and relations with the United States have become intertwined themes of the campaign. President Petro's term was marked by repeated public recrimination with U.S. counterparts over cocaine flows and the prospect of U.S. intervention. Petro has argued his government seized the largest amount of drugs in history, a claim he has defended against the United Nations World Drug Report 2025, which found cocaine production in Colombia reached record highs; Petro has publicly disputed the U.N.'s methodology. The tension between seizure statistics and estimates of production feeds a central debate in the campaign: whether to double down on negotiated peace talks with armed groups or to pursue a security-first crackdown that leans on U.S. cooperation.
Regional developments have also politicized Bogotá's ties with Washington. Petro's left-wing stance now contrasts with more and more regional leaders aligning with the Trump administration, turning Colombia's election into a signal about broader ideological shifts in the hemisphere, not just a domestic contest over crime and coca cultivation.
For voters, the choice on May 31 is thus both immediate and strategic. They will weigh rising violence and the promise of continued talks against appeals for tougher security and a restoration of close U.S. cooperation. If no candidate clears 50 percent, the decision will be deferred to a head to head runoff on June 21, when the country will again confront the same tradeoffs with even higher stakes.
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If no candidate clears 50 percent on May 31, a June 21 runoff will decide whether Colombia deepens Petro-style negotiated talks or pivots to a security-first, more U.S.-aligned approach.
This article was created with AI assistance.
