That's all she wrote, folks. You can follow the progression yourself from here on in, but really there's no doubt at all who is the next President of Colombia.
UPDATE: Ok, ok, one update. The above was bulletin 6, this is bulletin 17. With 98.36% of the pre-count now in the score is:
Juan Manuel Santos: 8,889,187 votes (69.00%)
Antanas Mockus: 3,552,353 votes (27.57%)
Notably voter turnout was very low at less than 44%...everybody watching Brazil whup Ivory Coast, methinks. Anyway, toldya that's all she wrote earlier, didn't I. Congratulations therefore to Juan Manuel Santos and I hope he turns out to be a better Prez than this humble scribe anticipates. And make it up with Ecuador and Venezuela one time, willyaz?
Here according to notimex is how three of the main polling firms in Colombia are calling the June 20th run-off election for Colombia's presidency:
Maybe we shouldn't read these people too much and trust them considering the total pig's ear they made of the first round predictions, but really it'd now be a gargantuan surprise to see Santos beaten out by Mockus. Meanwhile, those versed in the language of Cervantes should link through to this interview of Santos in Colombia's daily El Tiempo, as it's pretty good and has the dude saying conciliatory things about everyone except Mockus. Even Chávez gets a fair hand, but it remains to be seen if the soon-to-be President Santos keeps the diplo about him when he takes over from his bossman.
The polls closed just under one hour ago and we already have 31.9% of the votes counted that show:
Juan Manuel Santos has 46.8% of votes Antanas Mockus has 21.43% of votes
We're told that by 8pm local time (9pm New York time) around 90% of votes are expected to have been counted. We'll update this post as the evening progresses. UPDATE: The scores are now 46.64% Santos, 21.61% Mockus, 10.35% Vargas, 9.47% Petro, 5.75% Sanín with 72% tallied in what's called the "precount" (i.e. official quick count and supposedly very accurate forecast). If you're interested in helping crash the official website, the link is here. UPDATE 2: Now 79.86% of the precount done, with 46.54% Santos, 21.68% Mockus, 10.33% Vargas, 9.38% Petro, 5.86% Sanín. It has to be said that these numbers are very different from all opinion polls carried out pre-election that had Santos and Mockus in a technicial dead heat for the last two weeks of campaigning (here's the link to charts showing the last set of main polls from last Sunday). Let's just leave it at that for the time being.
UPDATE 3: 91.8% of the precount is now done and I think we've got the picture by now: 46.57% Santos, 21.55% Mockus, 10.24% Vargas, 9.22% Petro, 6.05% Sanín. There are going to be a lot of questions asked about this vote, not least from the observers that have already made observations of irregularities.
UPDATE 4:We'll make this the last update, as with 95.34% the result is now all-but set in stone. 46.58% Santos, 21.50% Mockus, 10.19% Vargas, 9.18% Petro, 6.11% Sanín.
This weekend sees the first round of voting in Colombia's Presidential elections (and also 'ley seca' starts today, which means no alcoholic drinks can be sold until the polls close Sunday), with the most likely result being frontrunners Santos and Mockus going to Ballotage in three weeks' time. IKN thoroughly recommends that you follow any and all developments this weekend via the best English language coverage of the country bar none, the excellent online news medium Colombia Reports.
After the rocketing rise in the polls of Antanas Mockus in Colombia's Presidential elections, the empire is fighting back. A poll released by IPSOS yesterday has the officialist "U" candidate Juan Manuel Santos in a slight, 1% lead at 35%, with Mockus polling 34%. In fact the poll indicates a technical dead heat but it does mark a change from the 38% Mockus /29% Santos poll the same company published the week before.
Meanwhile, Mockus's running mate Sergio Fajardo managed to end up in hospital this weekend after falling off his bicycle in Medellín. Before you snort and giggle we note that this accident seems to be a pretty serious one, as Colombia's potential Veep managed to break his hip, had to undergo a five hour operation and is now in an isolation ward for fear of infection. Any further campaigning the dude does in the next couple of weeks will likely be via Facebook.
Back to that IPSOS poll, and it's not all bad news for Mockus. Once again the pollsters showed that Santos is having big trouble breaking out from his hardcore support and appealing to the wider Colombian population, because IPSOS also reported that in a second round runoff between Santos and Mockus, Mockus would get 48% support while Santos would get 41%. This points to the basic problem behind the Santos bid: you might love Álvaro Uribe or you might hate him, but there's no denying that he's a charismatic politician who appeals greatly to the Colombian psyche. Whereas Santos is a dickhead.
As reported late last week, Colombia's Uribe-blessed presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos has decided to switch tactics after making an EpicFail of his election campaign so far (noted yesterday, Colombia Reports has the lowdown on that here).
But today we All Hail The Bipolar Capybaraone again, as Chigüire reveals the major new Santos tactic in this post:
Chigüire goes on to quote Santos as saying;
"I don't understand why I'm being judged for suddenly growing a beard, I simply wanted a change in my image. What's more, shaving has always bothered me. My beard has nothing at all to do with Mockus's."
The rest of the Chigüire post is also unmissable, so please make a point of clicking through. Meanwhile (and slightly more seriously) for more good commentary on The Santos change in tactics (which, surprise surprise, involves going negative and running a dirty smear campaign against frontrunner Antanas Mockus), go visit Structurally Maladjusted's post on the subject as once again bloggers lead the way and MSM journalists can only follow (then steal the ideas, give no credit and claim all plaudits for themselves....as usual).
Colombia Reports has been the go-to site for English language news on Colombia's presidential election ever since campaigning kicked off and today the excellent coverage has a worthy addition. CR's editor Adriaan Alsema has written this op-ed on the race so far and looked carefully at the major campaign blunders of Juan Manuel Santos in the light of the Mockus surge.
It's a top article and neatly gets to the heart of several issues surrounding the election. Smart analysis and thoroughly recommended, here's the link again to make sure you click through.
This race is beginning to get very interesting indeed. Here's the chart with the latest opinion poll numbers out yesterday evening...
.....and here's a straight translation of this ANSA wire report (I've translated it kinda literally just for a bit of fun...the mentality of Spanish is different, it's not just the words used):
The ex-mayor of Bogotá Antanas Mockus has cut even further the distance between him and the ex-Minister of Defence Juan Manuel Santos, in his aspiration to reach the Presidency of Colombia, according to the results of an opinion poll divulged this afternoon by a televison news program.
According to the study, realized by the National Consulting Centre for the television news program, the Party of the U (centre officialist) has a support of 36%, while Mockus of the Green Party (non-traditional movement) follows him with 29%.
After the two favourites in the polls follow Noemí Sanín (officialist) 19%, Gustavo Petro (opposition) 4%, Rafael Pardo (opposition 4%, Germán Vargas (officialist) 2%.
The television news program CMI, who contracted the opinion poll, informed that the consultation was realized between April 12th and 14th in 38 cities, via telephone calls, with a margin of error 3% and a confiability of 95%.
For sure, the first thing that most will note is that if Sanín doesn't make the run-off (as is looking likely) there are a lot of those 19% that will support Santos in the ballotage. This makes Santos stil the favourite for the whole caboodle, but Mockus really is moving up quickly. There's a lot at stake here, be in no doubt. Mockus is left wing and running under a Green Party ticket, but he's by no means a hard left candidate, he's pro a lot of the things that foreigners watching the election will approve of (FDI, open relations, etc) and is much more the Chilean biz-friendly type of soft left than the Venezuelan type of hard left....but saying that, you junior miners better watch out, because this is the Green Party after all.
By way of a reminder, the first round vote happens May 30th. If no candidate makes it to 50% + 1 vote, then there's a second round run-off between the top two.
With a deservedhat-tip to Krupa at LatAm Daily (that site is turning out to be a great blog to follow, folks), here's a graphic of the latest voter intention poll out of Colombia:
It seems as though the race is shaping up in the way envisaged in the "Roadmap" article in IKN46 which was also put up here earlier in the week. We even guesstimated that Santos's numbers would float up to around 35% and his main competition would come from Sanín. So that's working out.
FWIW, I'm sticking with the previous bottom line about this election. The Uribe-backed Santos may look like a shoo-in to outside observers but this one is far too close to call right now. The real election begins on May 31st, the day after the first round when the pacts and deals start getting done. This election is likely to go to the wire.
This appeared as a small part of IKN46, out last Sunday:
Colombia: A roadmap to the May 30th Presidential election
This week The Economist ran a note (6) on the Colombian congressional elections of last week that, in my opinion at least, sums up the main story in as few words as possible. IKN continues after the break:
ALTHOUGH he is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term in the presidential election in May, Álvaro Uribe’s influence over Colombia will remain great. As votes were slowly tallied in an election for a new Congress on March 14th, it became clear that parties which formed part of his centre-right coalition will retain a clear majority. Who will command these legislators is less so.
The vote seemed to strengthen the claims of Juan Manuel Santos, a former defence minister who more than anyone else embodies the continuation of Mr Uribe’s “democratic security” policy. Mr Santos’s U Party (that’s U for Uribe) won 25% of the valid votes, and increased its representation in the 102-seat Senate to 28, from 20.
But Mr Santos looks unlikely to win an outright victory, avoiding a run-off vote. He wants a broad coalition with other uribista forces, including the Conservative Party. The Conservatives did well, winning 21% of the vote and raising their total of senators by four, to 22. But their primary, held on the same day, was so close that it was unlikely to produce a result for days. Only then will it be clear whether or not the party offers a strong challenge to Mr Santos.
A less welcome potential ally for Mr Santos is the new National Integration Party (PIN), formed by friends and relatives of former legislators accused by prosecutors of links to right-wing paramilitary militias. This party won nine senate seats and 8% of the valid votes, mainly in the north of the country.
Some of Mr Uribe’s main opponents fared poorly. The left-wing Democratic Pole party lost two senate seats and was outpolled by the PIN. A parliamentary list backing Sergio Fajardo, a former mayor of Medellín running for the presidency as an independent, managed to elect only one senator. Mr Fajardo faces a strong rival for independent-minded voters in Antanas Mockus, who won a presidential primary for the newly formed Green Party, which secured five senate seats.
For most of the past two centuries, Colombian politics was dominated by just two parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. Mr Uribe, a Liberal who ran as an independent and behaved as a Conservative, upset that pattern. He is bequeathing a politically fractured country, even if many of the splits turn more around personalities than policies.
IKN back. At this point, we can say the following about the May 30th Presidential elections:
Juan Manuel Santos is very unlikely to gather enough votes to win during the first round of voting but is a virtual certainty to be one of the two candidates left in the run-off vote. Early polls have him as frontrunner with 25% of voter intention. It would be no surprise at all to see that number float up to the 35% mark and the field becomes more decided.
We now know that seven candidates will go to round one: Juan Manuel Santos (“U” party and probably in alliance with the hard right PIN party), Noemí Sanín (Partido Conservador, Conservative Party), Rafael Pardo (Partido Liberal, Liberal Party) Antanas Mockus (Partido Verde, Green Party) Gustavo Petro (Polo Democrático Alternativo, Alternative Democratic Pole) Germán Vargas (Cambio Radical, Radical Change) Sergio Fajardo (Compromiso Ciudadano, Citizen’s Compromise).
The candidate from the Conservative party is now decided, with ex-Colombian ambassador to the UK and former cabinet minister Noemí Sanín getting the nod over Andrés Felipe Arias (a man better known to the World as ‘Uribito’ (little Uribe) because he proposed precisely the same policies as Uribe himself).At the moment Sanín is a likely (though less certain than Santos) candidate to get through to round two. The alternative “logically possible” to get to round two at the moment is Antanas Mockus.
Whoever wins the final vote will almost certainly make it by standing on a “continuation of Uribe’s policies” manifesto. Uribe himself backs Santos (from his own party, his ex-Defence Minister and general loyal attack dog for many years) but Santos does not have the public backing, charisma and goodwill that Uribe does. Santos is the favourite right now, but if the run-off opponent can talk the same talk as the officialist candidate while offering a more positive personality the whole scenario may quickly change.
Santos may benefit from any friction between the government and the FARC guerrilla movement, as it would give him chance to flex his strong point of standing up to the terrorists. He might also benefit from any diplomatic rumblings between Colombia and Venezuela (Chávez is a favourite bugbear of Santos, and vice versa). In other words, Colombia may be in for a rocky ride in the next ten weeks or so as the law of Cui Bono comes into operation. Already we can see this tactic playing out, as in Spain’s “La Razon newspaper this morning we have a headline quoting Santos that reads (translated) “The alliance between ETA, FARC and Chávez is not a secret” (7).
My personal opinion right now is “too close to call” on this election. The make-up of the runoff will be all important, but until May 30th Santos will make most of the foreign media headlines, get labelled Uribe’s favoured and be considered by many as a shoo-in. However the real battle starts in the second round of voting and the pacts, political alliances and potential power-sharing deals between the two candidates still in the running and those left behind will seal the eventual winner. It really is far too difficult to call a winner right now. The good news for foreign money is that, in general terms, whoever wins will likely win on an Uribe-esque ticket at the very least regarding the economy and very likely in political terms too. The bottom line is that Colombia’s push to be a foreign investment friendly state is unlikely to change course.
