2022 Colombian presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Colombia on 29 May 2022, with a runoff on 19 June 2022 as no candidate obtained at least 50% in the first round of voting. Iván Duque, who was elected president in 2018, was ineligible to run due to term limits. Gustavo Petro, a senator, former Mayor of Bogota, and runner-up in the 2018 election, defeated Rodolfo Hernández Suárez, former Mayor of Bucaramanga, in the runoff election. Petro's victory made him the first left-wing candidate to be elected president of Colombia, and his running mate, Francia Márquez, is the first Afro-Colombian elected to the vice-presidency, as well as the second female vice-president overall.
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| Turnout | 54.98% (first round) 0.76pp 58.17% (second round) 4.24pp | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This article is part of a series on the |
| Politics of Colombia |
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The elections were held in the aftermath of the 2021 Colombian protests amid poor economic conditions during the country's COVID-19 pandemic. Petro, a former AD/M-19 member who was defeated by Duque by over ten percentage points in 2018, was chosen as a candidate of the Historic Pact for Colombia alliance. Petro's left-wing platform encompassed support for land reform, universal health care, continuing the Colombian peace process, and expanding social services.
Hernández, an independent affiliated with the League of Anti-Corruption Governors, ran a populist campaign that emphasized support for law and order policies and anti-corruption efforts. Hernández experienced a surge in support in the final weeks of the campaign, which allowed him to overtake conservative candidate Federico Gutiérrez for a spot in the runoff. This surge in popularity was partially credited to his substantial social media following and TikTok videos, which led him to be dubbed the "king of TikTok".
Petro won the runoff with 50.42% of the vote to Hernández's 47.35%. Petro dominated in regions on Colombia's Caribbean and Pacific coasts, and received over 81% of the vote in the coastal department of Chocó. Due to an increased turnout among his supporters, Petro received nearly 2.7 million more votes in the second round than the first. The result was noted for a continuing trend of left-wing victories in Latin America, which has been dubbed as a "new pink tide".