Two weeks before the second round presidential in Colombia, a new voting intention survey showed that the candidate of the League of Anticorruption Governors, Rodolfo Hernández, leads the preferences of citizens with 46.4%. While the candidate of the Historical Pact, Gustavo Petro, has 43.3% of the electoral inclination.
The measurement was known a week after the first round, in which Petro and Hernández were the two candidates who obtained the ticket to the new vote, scheduled for June 19.
The voting intention survey was carried out by the firms Guarumo SAS and EcoAnalítica Measurement and Economic Concepts SAS It was carried out between June 1 and 4 and 1,958 citizens were consulted. The margin of error is 2.5%.
The measurement is known at a time when citizens continue to analyze the proposals and the positions of the two finalists in the competition for the head of state. And in that each one of them advances in their strategies to win the largest possible number of voters on the new day.
According to the figures, engineer Hernández is 3.1% ahead in the intention to vote for the candidate from the left sectors. This figure is slightly higher than the measurement’s margin of error, which is 2.5%.
In a survey carried out by the same firms, between May 16 and 19, days before the first presidential round, they asked about a possible scenario of a second vote between Rodolfo and Petro in which the trend was different. Well, at that time the senator from the left was ahead with 45.2% and the former mayor of Bucaramanga followed him with 41.5%.
Voting intention by region for the second round in Colombia
The competition between these two candidates becomes interesting when you analyze how the figures are in five specific regions of the country.
In the case of Antioquia and the Coffee Region, the winner is Rodolfo, who has 57.2%. Petro, meanwhile, gets 27.5%. In Bogotá, the opposite happens: the candidate of the Historical Pact is ranked first with 52.8 and the engineer from Santander is second, with 37.7%.
The Atlantic Coast also favors Petro in voting intention. In this part of the country the applicant has 56.8% and Hernández 34.1. But in the Central Eastern region, where the Santanderes and Boyacá are, the inclination is towards the former mayor of Bucaramanga, who reaches 60.3% and Petro 31.4%.
And, finally, in the South Western part, the candidate from the left has 59.1% and the candidate from the League of Anti-Corruption Governors 33.2%.
the votes of others
The Guarumo SAS and EcoAnalítica Measurement and Economic Concepts SAS survey also asked about the fate of the votes cast by the other four candidates who did not make it to the second presidential round: Federico Gutiérrez, Sergio Fajardo, John Milton Rodríguez and Enrique Gómez Martínez. .
According to Andrés Pérez, manager of Ecoanalítica SAS, this “filter question” made it easier for the pollsters to “know what change the interviewee had and what his intention was with the move to the second round.”
In the case of Fico – endorsed by the Team for Colombia convergence and who obtained, according to the National Registry, 5,058,010 votes – 66.8% of his voters said they leaned towards engineer Hernández. While only 3.5% said they were leaving with Petro.
This majority inclination seems to have occurred after the same former mayor of Medellín affirmed, since last Sunday, that he would be with the engineer, which he ratified this week. In addition, there is no doubt that a tendency against the left-wing candidate is concentrated among his voters.
“It is a very significant thickness. People who voted for Federico Gutiérrez have a tendency to vote for Rodolfo Hernández, from what we saw in the data,” Pérez said.
Division of the voters
In the case of Fajardo, from the Centro Esperanza Coalition, who obtained 888,585 votes in the first round, 33.2% of his voters said they favored Rodolfo and 35.8% favored Petro. In this case, there is a division among the voters of this political alliance, whose members have been expressing their support for both candidates in recent days.
“This is an interesting fact. It is clear that, taking into account the margin of error, 50% of the votes are going to Rodolfo. And the other 50% to Gustavo Petro”, Pérez explained.
On the sides of John Milton Rodríguez, from Colombia Justa Libres and who got 274,250 votes, 53.6% said they were with Hernández and 18.0% with Petro. And among the voters of Enrique Gómez Martínez, of National Salvation and who obtained 50,539 votes in the first round, 77.1% would go with Rodolfo.
The blank vote is becoming the protagonist for the second round in Colombia
But there is a fact that is one of the most striking in the survey and it is the number of blank votes in each of these four electorates. Which exceeds, in some cases, 20% of the citizens who leaned towards them.
In the case of Fico, his voters who would vote blank are 23%, which, according to the candidate’s vote in the first round, would be more than a million citizens.
Among those who voted for Fajardo, 24.5% said the same. This would be a little over 200,000 voters. And as for Rodríguez, 25% of his voters said they were going to vote blank, around 70,000 voters.
On the sides of Gómez Martínez, this figure is the lowest of white voters: 10%, which would represent around 5,000 votes.
In total, the survey indicates that 8.4% of citizens would vote blank on June 19. In the elections last Sunday this trend reached 1.73%.
Pérez affirmed that with the blank vote “always happens” this type of behavior when making measurements.
“At this moment it returns and increases, because uncertainty increases. I believe that the blank vote is going to start to decrease and people are going to start making decisions”, affirmed the expert.
The Guarumo SAS and EcoAnalítica Measurement and Economic Concepts SAS survey was released at a time when there have been other measurements that also reflect a tough competition between the presidential candidates.
presidential measurements
RCN Television implemented a daily measurement mechanism called tracking, which began by showing a 7.7% advantage of Rodolfo Hernández over Gustavo Petro on May 30 and 31. However, this distance has been shortened and in the well-known yesterday the engineer leads the senator by 1.6%.
The National Consulting Center carried out a first measurement between May 30 and 31 and in it Rodolfo obtained 41% and Petro, 39%. But, in the most recent one, the inclination changed and the leftist candidate was above the engineer by almost 4 points.
The results of the voting intention survey of Guarumo SAS and EcoAnalítica Measurement and Economic Concepts SAS leave some clear points as conclusions.
The first of them is that the contest between Rodolfo and Petro seems to be increasingly competitive. And this is demonstrated by the measurements that have been made in the last week.
But it also makes it clear that the blank vote is becoming the protagonist of the presidential election. In that spectrum there would be several voters that the two campaigns have to target in the two weeks that remain until June 19.
To do this, the two candidates have already rolled out various strategies that seek to conquer those who are inclined to vote blank and those who are undecided. Among which are adhesions and contact with citizens through interviews in the media.
In short, the next two weeks will be definitive for Rodolfo and Petro to add the largest number of voters. Which will lead them to occupy the House of Nariño for the next four years.
Grupo de Diarios América (GDA), to which El Nacional belongs, is a leading media network founded in 1991 that promotes democratic values, an independent press and freedom of expression in Latin America through quality journalism for our hearings.