Orza
Report Presidential First Round Elections 2026
*Image created by artificial intelligence.
At ORZA, we believe that the strength of democracy depends, to a large extent, on the quality of information available to understand how its collective decisions are shaped. The first presidential round not only defines which candidacies advance to the definitive stage of the race, but also reveals the electorate's trends, the power correlations between political projects, and the territorial dynamics of the vote in the country.
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2026 – 2029
To that end, we present this report on the results of the first round of the 2026 presidential election. The document provides an analysis of the political landscape emerging from the polls, examining the distribution of votes among candidates, voter turnout, regional performance, and the key trends that will shape the second round. The analysis is based on the monitoring and systematization of electoral information conducted by ORZA, using the [X %] of polling stations reported in accordance with bulletin number [X] from the electoral authority, which served as the reference for consolidating the data presented in this report. This document was prepared using preliminary results from the pre-count. The pre-count data are for informational purposes only and have no legal standing.
01
The winner
Iván Cepeda Castro
Iván Cepeda Castro (Bogotá, 1962). Presidential candidate for Colombia on behalf of the Historic Pact for the 2026 elections. In the first round, he received XXXXXX votes, representing XX% of the total vote. He holds a degree in philosophy from San Clemente of Ohrid University in Bulgaria and is a specialist in international humanitarian law from the Catholic University of Lyon.
He began his public service in human rights organizations, where he founded the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Foundation and led the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (Movice). In 2010, he was elected to the Chamber of Representatives for the Democratic Pole and has held a seat in the Senate since 2014. Throughout his legislative career, he has served as a facilitator in the peace processes between the Juan Manuel Santos government and the FARC and ELN, and is currently one of those in charge of the government delegation in the dialogues with the ELN under the administration of Gustavo Petro. Iván Cepeda's vision for the country focuses on consolidating a National Agreement that allows the transition towards an “agri-food superpower” and an “Agrarian Revolution” based on land redistribution and the strengthening of the peasant economy. His program proposes the radicalization of social reforms to address the structural causes of violence, such as poverty and inequality, through a model of sustainable and sovereign development. Likewise, it seeks to deepen the democratization of the State through “constituent power,” prioritizing the protection of biodiversity, scientific innovation, and the guarantee of fundamental rights in historically excluded territories. As a congressman, his work has focused on creating laws for the implementation of peace agreements, the reform of the public force, and land restitution. He has promoted no-confidence motions against defense ministers and has defended the theory of “entrapment” in the Jesús Santrich case. In October 2025, he won the internal consultation of the Historical Pact with 1.5 million votes, defining his presidential aspirations to succeed Gustavo Petro.
MORE BENEFITED
Poor urban dwellers and those benefiting from subsidies.
Poor urban dwellers and those benefiting from subsidies.
Poor urban dwellers and those benefiting from subsidies.
Less Benefited
Poor urban dwellers and those benefiting from subsidies.
Poor urban dwellers and those benefiting from subsidies.
Poor urban dwellers and those benefiting from subsidies.
02
Electoral map
The electoral map of the 2018 and 2022 presidential elections reveals a profound transformation in Colombia’s political landscape. In 2018, then-Uribista candidate Iván Duque managed to build a solid territorial stronghold in the center of the country—the Coffee Region, Antioquia, the Santanderes, and much of the Eastern Plains—winning in 23 departments and consolidating a clearly defined conservative and right-wing bloc. Gustavo Petro, although he achieved a historic vote for the left, concentrated his strength in Bogotá, the Pacific region, and some peripheral areas such as Putumayo and the Caribbean Coast. Four years later, the map revealed a break from that territorial dominance: Petro not only expanded his traditional strongholds but also managed to penetrate intermediate and urban regions where he had previously been in the minority, especially in the Caribbean, Valle del Cauca, and several departments in the Amazon and the southern part of the country. Beyond the simple change in the winner, the contrast between the two maps reflects the transition from an election organized around the “Uribism-anti-Uribism” divide to a contest marked by the erosion of the traditional political establishment and a more widespread demand for change. In 2022, Uribism lost the ability to organize the vote territorially as it had in 2018; in fact, the political space previously represented by Duque was partially absorbed by the anti-establishment candidacy of Rodolfo Hernández, who inherited a significant portion of the conservative and anti-Petro vote in regions such as Antioquia, the Coffee Region, and the Santanderes. At the same time, Petro consolidated a much broader and more diverse territorial coalition, connecting the vote from historically excluded peripheries with major urban centers and young, mobilized sectors following the protest cycles of 2019 and 2021, which ultimately reshaped the national political map. The 2026 electoral map ultimately confirmed a new political reconfiguration of the country, distinct from both the Uribista hegemony of 2018 and the cycle of change that brought Gustavo Petro to the presidency in 2022. The left managed to retain a significant portion of its strongholds in Bogotá, the Pacific region, and key sectors of the Caribbean Coast, while the opposition consolidated its territorial presence in Antioquia, the Coffee Region, and the Santanderes, though no longer under a single leadership but rather fragmented between a traditional right and a more radical, anti-establishment current that capitalized on the government’s waning support and public discontent regarding security and the economy. The result revealed a country divided into three major political and territorial blocs: urban and peripheral regions aligned with progressive agendas, a historically consolidated conservative core, and a volatile protest vote that proved decisive in several intermediate areas. Rather than an election of continuity or absolute rupture, 2026 highlighted the consolidation of a much more fragmented and competitive political system, in which no single force managed to establish clear national hegemony, as had occurred in the two previous presidential elections.
The Pacto Histórico candidate, Iván Cepeda, managed to consolidate the momentum of his political campaign, recording a 39.1% voter preference, according to the polling model developed by ORZA—a figure that aligns with the strength demonstrated by Gustavo Petro in 2022. The candidate closes with 40.34%****, which would represent reaching the ambitious goal of XXXX million votes, surpassing or maintaining the electoral success of the left at this same stage four years ago. This stability in the figures confirms that the movement has managed to retain its electoral base, now facing the challenge of securing the support necessary for victory in the first round. On the other hand, the opposition in this electoral cycle exhibits a dynamic of fragmentation and uneven growth compared to the situation in 2022. While Abelardo de la Espriella (DLS) is projected to receive 28.171% of the vote (XXX million votes) following a downward trend in the final stretch, Paloma Valencia has shown a considerable rebound, reaching a projection of 23.941% (XXX million votes). These figures indicate that, although the Historic Pact maintains its lead with a vote share higher than that obtained by Iván Duque at the time, the combined strength of the alternative right-wing and center-right forces points to a close race, leaving the outcome in the hands of these figures’ ability to unify the opposition vote.
03
Comparison of first round results 2022 vs 2026
Now, these results show the evaporation of the political center. While in 2022 the center (also represented by Sergio Fajardo) tried to position itself as a rational management alternative, by 2026 that space seems to have been devoured by bloc logic. The center in Colombia suffers from a “fragility of moderation”; faced with an already institutionalized left-wing narrative and a right-wing populism (embodied in figures like De la Espriella) that appeals to the gut, the lukewarm discourse of the center is running out of oxygen. The graph shows that voters are no longer looking for a “middle ground,” but a clear trench for the first round, having a strategic vote from the outset, which turns the center into a spectator of a heavyweight fight.
The transition from 2022 to 2026 suggests that the left-wing narrative has achieved what authors such as Steven Levitsky define as the “stabilization of a grassroots coalition.” By maintaining a solid 40%, the narrative is no longer one of insurgency against the system, but rather of a deeply rooted political identity that has managed to frame social demands within the national institutional dynamic under the rich vs. poor dynamic. This phenomenon reflects the thesis of the “maturation of the left” in Latin America, where the electorate stops voting on the basis of a momentary emotion and instead forms a bloc of programmatic loyalty that resists the erosion of power. In contrast, the phenomenon of “populist outsiders,” represented by the rise of figures like Rodolfo Hernández in 2022 and the rise of Abelardo de la Espriella on the right-wing populist spectrum this year, demonstrates a volatile nature. Following Jan-Werner Müller and his studies on populism, these candidates operate under the “illusion of the sole representative of the people,” a powerful yet fragile narrative that depends on constant polarization. While the left appears to have built a concrete “foundation” among its voters, the populist right captures the discontented vote, which is fluid by definition.
04
From the first-round queries: how did the candidates grow?
The case of Iván Cepeda, who went from 1.2 million votes in the primary to a total of XXXX votes in the first round, illustrates what Donald Horowitz (CITA) calls “coalitions of convenience” that transform into identity-based blocs. This growth—nearly six times his initial base—suggests that the left has managed to capture not only its own supporters but also a mass of unaffiliated voters, who in the Colombian context would be part of political machines, and who see this bloc as a stable national structure for their interests. In fragmented party systems (cite Kenneth Roberts), voters tend to coalesce around the pole that demonstrates the greatest “capacity for governance,” allowing a modest primary to serve merely as the foundation for a massive mobilization in the general election. On the other hand, the results of Abelardo de la Espriella—XX million without having gone through a primary—compared to the performance of Paloma Valencia, who grew from XX in the primary to XX million in the first round, reveal the tension between media charisma and party structure. The populist outsider capitalizes on the discontent of those who do not feel represented by traditional primaries, achieving “liquid” but potent growth. While Paloma Valencia shows more inertial growth, typical of the few party structures that supported her and her own voters who have already peaked in the primary, De la Espriella represents the politics of spectacle, where a personality-driven narrative replaces the need for a pre-existing organized base, challenging the order established by the traditional machinery of the right-wing bloc. The fact that the rest of the candidates, including Claudia López, Roy Barreras, and Sergio Fajardo, failed to even reach the one-million-vote threshold in these elections confirms the thesis of “affective polarization” (CITATION from Shanto Iyengar). In this scenario, the political center disappears, caught in the vise of two poles with narratives of salvation or punishment. The weighting graph shows short or even regressive lines for these candidates in terms of relative relevance; their inability to connect the poll with the first round demonstrates that, in 2026, the electorate perceives moderation as a lack of definition in the face of an uncertain and unstable national context.
05
Blank votes, participation, and abstention
Reflection that indicates the table – it has risen 10 percentage points with a peak in absolute terms in 2014 – explain that 2014 phenomenon – today, participation is +50 and -40 as in 2000
For years, Colombia maintained a structural abstention rate above 50%, reaching its peak in 2014 (60.1%), an election marked by low perceived competitiveness. Starting in 2018, a shift became apparent: turnout consistently exceeded the 50% threshold for the first time (54.21% and 54.81% in the last two elections), signaling a reconfiguration of electoral behavior. Even so, nearly 45 out of every 100 eligible citizens remain off the ballot, which continues to constitute the system’s main “latent voter.” In 2026, voter turnout must be viewed against a historical trend that had been showing a gradual decline in abstention but experienced a particularly sharp break in 2014. Until 2010, turnout had remained close to 50.1%, with abstention—though high—seeming to begin to decline. However, in the first round of Juan Manuel Santos’s reelection, abstention reached 60.11%, the highest level of the period analyzed, breaking the previous trend and marking a turning point in recent electoral behavior. That spike cannot be understood solely as a lack of public interest, but rather as the result of a political juncture in which Santos’s reelection failed to mobilize the electorate en masse in the first round, even as the country was entering a decisive discussion on the peace process. The 2014 election shows, then, that abstention in Colombia is not solely driven by structural factors, but also by each election’s ability to generate a sense of electoral urgency. At that time, the Santos-Zuluaga contest had not yet fully crystallized as a referendum on peace, which allowed a significant portion of the electorate to stay away from the polls. Starting in 2018, however, turnout once again exceeded 50%³, suggesting that more polarized elections—or those perceived as decisive—do succeed in mobilizing voters who usually stay on the sidelines. In 2026, this data must be considered alongside a fundamental demographic shift: as the population ages, the electorate also changes, and future turnout will depend on whether this aging trend boosts voter turnout among younger adults or, conversely, increases abstention among older adults due to barriers related to mobility, health, and access to voting.
The universe of voters in the first round of presidential elections has almost doubled in two decades, increasing from 11.2 million in 2002 to 21.4 million in 2022. The most significant jump occurred between 2014 and 2018 (+6.4 million), consolidating a sustained expansion of the active electorate that reflects both census growth and greater citizen mobilization. The specific dip in 2014 breaks the upward trend and marks the recent historical floor, while 2022 sets the ceiling for effective participation in absolute terms.
In the first round of the presidential election on May 25, 2014, the number of blank ballots reached an unusually high level for a Colombian presidential election: nearly 61% of valid votes (about 770,000 votes), compared to 1.531% in 2010, on a day also marked by the highest abstention rate in twenty years (59.981%). The prevailing explanation does not point to a single cause but rather to a situation of polarization with an “orphaned” electorate: as the contest centered on two opposing poles (Santos and Zuluaga), a segment of voters who felt equidistant from both did not find an option that represented them and channeled that rejection through the blank vote. Unlike the abstainer, the blank-vote castor does go to the polls and deliberately marks that box, which, in the research by García Sánchez and Cantor (2018), characterizes them as a person with greater cognitive, informational, and educational resources: someone who understands the political landscape and, precisely for that reason, decides to actively express their dissent rather than stay home. It is therefore appropriate to treat blank votes and abstention as distinct phenomena, even though both are often broadly interpreted as “protest.” Looking ahead to the first round of 2026, however, the dynamics of polarization appear to be having the opposite effect on the blank vote. The election on May 31, 2026, has been described as one of the most polarized in recent decades, yet it yielded a total of XXXXX blank votes. The key difference from 2014 is that this polarization is not “driving” voters toward blank votes, but rather absorbing them into the extremes: recent results showed a scenario where the center is disappearing and the right is reconfiguring itself, and where polarization itself has caused blank votes to decline, standing at XXX% in recent results. In other words, while in 2014 polarization left a centrist electorate adrift, leading them to take refuge in the blank vote, in 2026 the confrontation between two opposing models of the country is mobilizing that same electorate to take sides, largely through the “tactical voting” strategy or active rejection of a candidate, which compresses the space for the blank vote rather than expanding it.
06
The Geography of Power and the Decline of the Center
Bogota: Cepeda dominates, but the right wing grows.
Bogotá would appear to be the place where the complexity of the new Democratic Center is best appreciated: on one hand, the capital would continue to be Cepeda's stronghold in popular neighborhoods (Bosa, Kennedy, Ciudad Bolívar, Usme, San Cristóbal), with strong beats in areas where the Historic Pact consolidated its territorial network since 2018; but on the other hand, in the middle and upper-middle-class neighborhoods of the north and center (north Suba, Usaquén, Chapinero, Teusaquillo, and parts of Engativá), Paloma Valencia is making a remarkably solid showing, backed by the operation of some local actors, like Daniel Briceño, who obtained more than 260,000 votes in March. Bogotá's far-right voters who migrate from the CD to an outsider do so due to media contagion and not due to the operation of political machinery.
Caribbean coast: the rural-urban divide that decides the election
The Caribbean coast would be splitting into two clearly differentiated electoral universes, and that fracture would be the most important result of the entire May 31st day. In the coastal urban centers (Barranquilla, Cartagena, Soledad, Malambo, Santa Marta, capital Sincelejo), De la Espriella would be winning by a wide margin, supported by the formal endorsement of the Char family, which was made official on May 9th and which brings into play a machinery capable of mobilizing the 707,000 votes that Álex Char obtained in the 2022 presidential primary, of which 355,000 came from Atlántico. Added to this structure is Mauricio Gómez Amín, who resigned from the Liberal Party and his seat in the Senate to support De la Espriella.
Antioquia and Medellín: Uribista discipline restrains Abelardo and gives Paloma victory
In Antioquia, the scenario that qualitative perceptions anticipated is confirmed: a real dispute between Paloma Valencia and Abelardo De la Espriella for the Uribista base, but with Paloma prevailing. The explanation lies in the very nature of the Antioquian Democratic Center's machinery, likely the most disciplined in the country, which in March 2026 already demonstrated its mobilization capacity: the Democratic Center (CD) reached almost 3 million national votes with its closed list, and Paloma won the inter-party consultation with 3,236,286 votes, widely surpassing her eight rivals. That vote, far from being the result of individual sympathy, is essentially the party's vote, responding to institutional endorsement. Therefore, in municipalities like Rionegro, La Ceja, El Carmen de Viboral, and the nearby eastern corridors, where the local CD apparatus operates with almost militant loyalty, De la Espriella would be achieving important victories in sectors like Apartadó, popular sectors of Bajo Cauca, and Medellín communes where anti-system discourse resonates better than party discipline, but without reaching Paloma. Medellín city would be more volatile than rural Antioquia: there, De la Espriella's cannibalization of the CD base is felt more strongly, especially in sectors where Federico Gutiérrez's influence siphons off a considerable number of votes from the Democratic Center.
The behavior of conflict zones
Meanwhile, in the country’s outlying regions—the Pacific coast (Nariño, Cauca, Chocó, and Valle del Cauca), the Amazonian foothills (Putumayo, Caquetá), and parts of Guaviare and Meta—Cepeda is reportedly receiving his highest levels of support nationwide. This projection is based on a solid historical foundation: in the first round of 2022, Valle del Cauca contributed 1,045,908 votes to Petro, Nariño 434,000, Cauca 388,000, and Chocó 96,000, with sustained growth in the Pacific region between 2018 and 2022 (Chocó was the department with the highest growth) and nearly unanimous support in the ethnic and rural territories of the southwest. Building on that foundation, the Pact would gain xxxx votes in these departments [an increase/decrease of XX % compared to 2022], driven by a combination of the “victim vote,” the movement’s organized presence, the vice-presidential ticket featuring Aída Quilcué as a Nasa leader from Cauca, and the structural strength of Petrismo in the periphery, where its greatest traction lies in contrast to its weakness in Antioquia and the Coffee Region.
Added to this picture is a phenomenon that warrants separate analysis: the reported pressure from armed groups in Guaviare, Meta, and Caquetá to influence electoral support, which distorts an unadulterated reading of the endorsement rates in those territories. This distortion, however, must be interpreted with methodological caution, and this is where the MOE’s Electoral Risk Map proves valuable. The first is a matter of scale: the map, as of April 30, 2026, identified 386 municipalities at risk due to violence, equivalent to 34.4% of the country, of which 139 are at extreme risk, and the concentration falls precisely on the departments where Cepeda would be strongest. The second caveat concerns interpretation, and it is the most important. In its report to the 13th National Electoral Monitoring Commission (Bogotá, May 13, 2026), the MOE concluded that there is no significant correlation between the territorial control of illegal armed groups and the electoral success of a specific political organization; in fact, it describes rural areas as «a setting of pluralistic political contest,» where the Liberal and Conservative parties lead rather than any extremist group. The conclusion, then, is not that Cepeda’s vote in the periphery is manufactured by weapons, but rather that the risk lies in the integrity, freedom of suffrage, and effective participation.
Santander and De la Espriella's Victory
Santander is confirmed as De la Espriella's major regional triumph outside the coast, and that result would be reconfiguring the map of the Colombian right. The operational explanation lies in the territorial work the candidate has been building: former mayor of Bucaramanga, Jaime Andrés Beltrán, functions as regional manager and liaison with the Christian churches of Santander, a historically underestimated but decisive mobilization network in Bucaramanga, Floridablanca, Piedecuesta, and the provinces of El Socorro and García Rovira. Added to this operation is the disillusionment of the Aguilarista movement with the traditional Democratic Center and the migration of the evangelical vote, which in 2022 went to Rodolfo Hernández and today would be largely heading towards De la Espriella.
Quilcué's candidacy is misunderstood if viewed through the lens of conventional electoral metrics. Her voter base is modest, and her ability to transfer votes outside the progressive bloc is practically nil, but that diagnosis misses the point. Quilcué was chosen to embody the sociological antithesis of the strongest rival formula: an indigenous Nasa leader versus Paloma Valencia, who, also from Cauca, represents the genealogy of the department's traditional political class, historically questioned for its relationship with landowning elites and for episodes of institutionalized racism. This opposition is narrative architecture that turns Cauca into a microcosm of the national debate on who has the right to speak for Colombia. In a runoff election, where the dispute becomes identity-based rather than programmatic, Quilcué sets an unyielding ethical floor that no attack from the opposition bloc can erode without a symbolic cost. It is a defensive asset: calibrated not to win new votes, but to prevent the progressive base from defecting due to disillusionment or the narrative of “radical Cepeda.” Its value is structural, not arithmetic.
Restrepo fulfills the classic role of the technical vice president in a strong-toned presidential ticket. Abelardo built his candidacy on confrontation, performativity, and a rhetorical repertoire that intensely activates his base but generates resistance in the median voter, especially in the business community, financial guilds, and urban professionals who share a rejection of Petrismo but distrust the lawyer's style. Restrepo, former Minister of Finance and former Minister of Commerce under Duque, translates that formula into the language that segment understands: macroeconomic analysis, budget management, dialogue with guilds, and governability. In a second round, where Cepeda will build the narrative of «Abelardo is an institutional risk,» Restrepo is the operational answer to that attack, as he is proof that behind the tone there is governing capacity. The cost is the Duque baggage, which the progressive bloc will exploit with data on inflation, debt, and failed tax reform. But that cost is manageable, since voters who oppose Duque are unlikely to vote for Abelardo. Restrepo legitimizes the electoral base, in view of a second round.
Oviedo is the only one of the three vice-presidential candidates with a significant personal vote, as the approximately 1.2 million votes he received in the Great Consultation are mobilized capital. But this data, taken in isolation, overstates his contribution. The geographical and sociological composition of that electorate is narrow: predominantly Bogotano, urban, middle-class professional, technical, with an opinion voter profile. It is precisely the segment that Paloma, a politician with a traditional party brand and a confrontational record, has the most difficulty accessing on her own. The ticket is complementary by design, as Oviedo unlocks the urban center that Uribismo lost years ago. The problem is the ceiling. Oviedo, sociologically speaking, embodies a profile that in the Colombian popular imagination is identified as a Bogotano «gomelo» (posh person), from a private university, with technical language, and clearly distant from the working-class populace. This coding renders him ineffective in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and a good part of the popular Andean region, where the anti-Petro voter exists but does not recognize themselves in that cultural register. Operationally, the Paloma-Oviedo ticket has high marginal returns in few regions and zero returns in others. If the second round is decided in Bogotá and the Coffee Zone, Oviedo is the most valuable asset on the board. If it is decided in the Caribbean, he is practically irrelevant. This is the riskiest geographical bet of the three tickets.
08
Roadmap: Second Pass Arithmetic
The first key takeaway from the second-round results is a simple mathematical fact: none of the three candidates will reach 50.1% of the vote on their own. Cepeda starts with the highest baseline (an average of 38.61% across the five leading pollsters), but he still needs to gain more than 11 additional percentage points to secure the presidency. Abelardo (23.21%) and Paloma (22.51%) must practically double their current support, with gaps of nearly 27 percentage points. This disparity defines the entire dynamics of the runoff: Cepeda is competing to consolidate his lead, while his challengers are competing for rapid growth in just three weeks.
Every campaign must move towards the center of the matrix to attract the median voter, but the cost of moving varies in each case. Cepeda starts as the furthest from the institutional-dialogue quadrant and must moderate his tone and project governability without losing his anti-establishment base. The right-wing challenger who faces this situation encounters the symmetric dilemma: moderate enough to attract the center without alienating the anti-Petro vote that got him to the runoff. The alliance table shades this movement: adhesions not only contribute electoral capital, but also signal the symbolic repositioning that the median voter reads as a condition for granting their vote.
The explicit pool of losing candidates and blank votes amounts to approximately XXXXX points, a figure insufficient for the challenger to reach the threshold even with optimal transfer. The arithmetic then forces competition on two parallel fronts: on the one hand, winning over voters from the right-wing third party, where Abelardo and Paloma cannibalize each other, with asymmetrical transfers depending on who advances; on the other hand, mobilizing non-voters, a pool less visible in polls but electorally decisive. The second round is not won solely by redistributing the existing vote: it is won by expanding the mobilized universe.
09
Conclusions
With the runoff now set between Iván Cepeda and Abelardo de la Espriella, the 21 days between the first round and the runoff will, in practice, amount to a new election. The campaign now enters a different phase: less ideological and much more strategic. The discussion shifts away from multiple candidates and focuses on a two-way race where every mistake, every endorsement, and every sign of governance can tip the electoral balance. Recent experience shows that this period has the real capacity to shift public opinion: in 2022, more than 1.2 million additional Colombians participated in the runoff compared to the first round, confirming that the runoff not only redistributes votes but also expands and redefines the active electorate. The starting point favors Cepeda, who enters with the highest electoral base and an advantage over his opponent. However, that advantage is still far from representing a consolidated majority. Cepeda’s challenge will be to break through the ceiling of the pro-government vote and convince moderate sectors that in the first round opted for different alternatives or avoided aligning with the government. For Abelardo, on the other hand, the task will be much more aggressive: to rapidly transform an opposition candidacy into a majority coalition capable of unifying the right, capturing the center vote, and channeling anti-government sentiment. [DATA SECTION — first-round results, margin between candidates, and percentage of votes remaining available after the elimination of other candidates]. The key will not be solely how many votes remain up for grabs, but which ones are politically transferable and which might be lost to abstention or blank ballots. That explains why the runoff could end up being a much closer race than the initial snapshot of the first round suggests. In the runoff, the logic changes completely: fragmentation disappears, and the electorate begins to vote less out of affinity and more out of political calculation, governability, or rejection. Under this scenario, the campaign stops rewarding pure identity and begins to favor moderation, broad alliances, and the ability to convey stability. In a polarized election, small shifts in turnout, regional mobilization, or undecided votes can end up deciding the presidency. Therefore, the actors who were left out of the runoff will now move to the center of the political conversation. The votes of the eliminated candidates, the regional structures that support them, and centrist and independent leaders will become critical pieces in negotiations and repositioning. [DATA SECTION — estimated distribution of votes for eliminated candidates and possible alignments]. More than automatic vote transfers, what will be at stake is each campaign’s ability to build political legitimacy and expand its narrative to reach electorates that currently do not support it. The runoff transforms defeated candidates into key intermediaries for governance and turns every endorsement, neutrality, or defection into a decisive electoral asset.