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Two weeks before the second presidential round is held, a new voting intention survey showed that the candidate of the Anti-Corruption Leaders League, Rodolfo Hernándezleads the preferences of citizens with 46.4 percent, while the candidate of the Historical Pact, Gustavo Petrohas a 43.3 percent 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.

(In other news: Rodolfo Hernández says that rapprochement with Sergio Fajardo “is over”)

The voting intention survey was carried out by the firms Guarumo SAS and EcoAnalítica Measurement and Economic Concepts SAS between the first and the fourth of June and consulted 1,958 citizens. The margin of error is 2.5 percent.

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 when each of them advances in their strategies to win the largest possible number of voters in the new day.

According to the figures, engineer Hernández is 3.1 percent 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 percent.

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 Rudolph and Petro in which the trend was different, given that at that time the senator from the left was ahead with 45.2 percent and the former mayor of Bucaramanga followed him with 41.5 percent.

Voting intention by region

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 percent. Petro, meanwhile, gets 27.5. In Bogotá, the opposite happens: the candidate of the Historical Pact is first with 52.8 and the engineer from Santander is second, with 37.7 percent.

The Atlantic Coast also favors Petro in voting intention. In this part of the country the applicant has 56.8 percent and Rodolfo 34.1. But in the central eastern regionin which the Santanderes and Boyacá are, the inclination is towards the former mayor of Bucaramanga, who reaches 60.3 percent and Petro 31.4 percent.

And, finally, in the South Western part, the candidate on the left has 59.1 percent and the Anti-Corruption Governors League contender 33.2 percent.
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 convergence Team for Colombia and who obtained, according to the National Registry, 5,058,010 votes, 66.8 percent of his voters said they leaned towards engineer Hernández, while only 3.5 percent said they went 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 majority (…) The people who voted for Federico Gutiérrez have a tendency to vote for Rodolfo Hernández, from what we saw in the data,” Pérez said.

In the case of Fajardo, from the Hope Center Coalition and who obtained 888,585 votes in the first round, 33.2 percent of his voters said they favored Rodolfo and 35.8 percent 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 percent of the votes are going to Rodolfo and the other 50 percent to Gustavo Petro”, Pérez explained.

on the sides of John Milton Rodríguez, from Colombia Justa Libres and who got 274,250 votes, 53.6 percent said they were with Hernández and 18.0 percent 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 percent would go with Rodolfo.

The blank vote is becoming the protagonist

But there is a fact that is one of the most striking in the survey and it was the number of blank votes in each of these four electorateswhich exceeds, in some cases, 20 percent of the citizens who favored them.

In the case of Fico, his voters who would vote blank are 23 percent, 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 percent said the same. This would be a little over 200,000 voters. And refering to Rodrígueztheir voters who stated that they are going to vote blank are 25 percent, around 70,000 voters.

on the sides of Gomez Martinezthis figure is the lowest of white voters: 10 percent, which would represent around 5,000 votes.

In total, the survey indicates that 8.4 percent of citizens would vote blank on June 19. In the elections last Sunday this trend reached 1.73 percent.

Pérez affirmed that with the blank vote “always happens” this type of behavior when making measurements.

“Right now it’s coming back and it’s increasing, because uncertainty increases (…) I think the blank vote is going to start to decrease and people are going to start making decisions,” said the expert.

The survey of Guarumo SAS and EcoAnalítica Measurement and Economic Concepts SAS it was known at a time when there have been other measurements that also reflect a tough competition between the presidential candidates.

RCN Television implemented a daily measurement mechanism called the trackingwhich started showing a 7.7 percent advantage of Rodolfo Hernández over Gustavo Petro last May 30 and 31. However, this distance has been reduced and in the well-known yesterday the engineer leads the senator by 1.6 percent.

The National Consulting Center carried out a first measurement between May 30 and 31 and in it Rodolfo obtained 41 percent and Petro, 39 percent. 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 leaves as conclusions some clear points.

The first of them is that the contest between Rodolfo and Petro it 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 and 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 Rudolph and Petro add the largest number of voters that lead them to occupy the House of Nariño for the next four years.

(Do not miss: Petro: “For in-depth reforms, prior consensus must be made”)

TIME