Last weekend Colombia experienced the most exciting presidential elections in many years. There were many relevant issues comprised in these elections: the set of well prepared presidential candidates, the opinion polls and the expectations on the National Register Office. Most of the six presidential candidates had strong government plans and are perceived as good politicians. In fact, this year we had one of the best groups of presidential candidates in Colombia’s recent history. Elections were expected to be very competitive, according to opinion polls. Santos, the party of the U candidate, and Mockus, the green party’s candidate, were supposed to get the highest number of votes and Santos would win by a tiny difference. However, results were very different from those predictions. Santos did win but Mockus got a much lower vote share than predicted. None of the candidates got 50 per cent of votes, the number required to win presidency in the first elections round, so uncertainty continues.
The questions now are: why opinion polls were so divergent from reality? how did they affect the final result of the election? and what would happen at the second round of elections? The only certain fact is that the National Register Office made it up to us. Although we don’t yet know the official results of parliamentary elections (nearly three months ago!), results from these latest elections were published only three hours after polling stations closed.
Juan Manuel Santos, the presidential candidate for the Party of the U, got 47 per cent of vote. He is the leader of President Uribe’s party and was his minister of defence for almost three years. Santos made important achievements but also faced huge scandals during Uribe’s administration. He planned the military operation to release Ingrid Betancourt, a political leader held for six years by the FARC, and ordered the attack where one of the FARC chiefs was killed. However, he caused controversy by the ‘Fake Positives’ scandal, whereby innocent civilians were shot and registered as members of guerrillas killed in combat by soldiers of the Colombian army. Santos was also criticised for triggering political conflicts with two key trade partners: Venezuela and Ecuador.
The second highest voting was for Antanas Mockus, the green party’s candidate. He got 28.5 per cent of votes but was expected to get much more. Mockus had gained unprecedented popularity since the parliamentary elections. The ‘green wave’, as journalists called the effect of his candidacy, seemed to have invaded the country. In Bogota, there were green posters displayed in windows and cars all around the city. The green candidate had become a different option for those who neither follow traditional parties nor supported President Uribe. He was particularly popular among youngsters who were apathetic to politics and had faith on a government based in legality, education and sustainable development. However, that popularity was not reflected in the elections. Why?
Some analysts blame opinion polls for Mockus’s failure. Latest polls suggested that Santos and Mockus would get 39 per cent and 34 percent of votes respectively. Moreover, they estimated that 75 per cent of Colombians would cast their votes. That projected unprecedented voting was completely mistaken. Only 51 per cent of Colombians who can vote did so last weekend (14.5 million out of the nearly 30 million potential voters). Analysts suggest that the misleading message sent by opinion polls deterred many Mockus followers from voting and encouraged President Uribe’s supporters to cast their vote for Santos. The bigger loser in these elections were opinion polls, whose credibility will take long time to be regained. Their lack of accuracy is attributed to excluding voters from rural areas and only considering voting intentions.
However, many other analysts attribute the election results to Antanas Mockus himself. The green party candidate is an academic who struggles to clearly explain his ideas. He gave vague and ambiguous answers in the last TV debates, particularly on topics related to security. He also proposed unpopular policies such as increasing taxes, which scared many voters. Most importantly, his government plan was not as strong as Santos’s because he never expected to generate the ‘green wave’. He realised the scale of his followers only three months before presidential elections when more than one million Colombians voted to elect the green party presidential candidate.
So, who will be our next president? Recent opinion polls suggest that Santos would get 61 per cent of votes – however, everyone is now distrustful of them. The upcoming election results would depend on whether Mockus manages to encourage his young supporters to cast their vote and Santos his supporters to vote again in the second round. The day after the elections, Santos began approaching candidates who could not participate in the second round to make alliances. In contrast, Mockus’s strategy is to convince abstentionists to support him in the next elections. The winning strategy will remain a mystery until election day.