Cepeda courts center while traditional parties close doors; Valencia surges in polls

Colombia's presidential race is taking shape with less than two months until voters go to the polls on May 31, and the contours of the campaign are becoming sharper—and more fractious—by the day. Iván Cepeda, the leftist senator who has dominated polling since the legislative elections in early March, is making a deliberate play for the political center, even as traditional parties have signaled they will not form alliances with him. He received backing this week from Ariel Ávila, a senator from the Green Party, and used the moment to issue a direct appeal to centrist voters. "I want to call on citizens who feel part of the political center," Cepeda said, describing that center not as a place of comfortable neutrality but as a space requiring "character, decision, and the capacity to take a clear stance on the right side of history." The message was strategic: Cepeda leads most polls with 34 to 35 percent support, but a runoff scenario against the surging right-wing candidate Paloma Valencia shows a technical tie, suggesting his path to victory in a second round is narrower than his first-round dominance implies.

Valencia's rise has been the most dramatic shift in the race. Just three weeks ago, the uribista senator polled at 4 percent. After winning an internal party primary on March 8, she has climbed to between 16 and 22 percent depending on the pollster, making her a genuine threat to the ultra-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, who had been the strongest conservative challenger to Cepeda. The tension between Valencia and De la Espriella has now boiled into open conflict. De la Espriella, who has positioned himself as an outsider rejecting traditional party support, has attacked Valencia for accepting endorsements from former government ministers and establishment figures. "All those people came knocking on my door and I didn't let them in, because this is extreme coherence," he said. "You can't be independent when you're taking money from everyone." Valencia fired back, insisting she has made no ministerial promises and that her hands are clean. The right, it seems, is fracturing just as the left consolidates.

The ballot itself was determined this week by lottery. Cepeda will appear first on the ballot that Colombian voters receive, a position assigned by random draw. De la Espriella lands in slot five, Valencia in slot twelve. The full slate includes fifteen candidates across the political spectrum, from the ecological candidate Gustavo Matamoros Camacho to the independent Roy Barreras. The randomness of ballot position matters less than the substance of the race, but it is a reminder that the mechanics of voting are now locked in place.

Cepeda's outreach to the center comes against a backdrop of serious accusations from former president Álvaro Uribe. Without presenting evidence, Uribe has claimed that Cepeda orchestrated the assassination of Miguel Uribe Turbay, a senator and presidential candidate killed in what authorities believe was a hit by the Second Marquetalia, a dissident FARC faction. Uribe's logic, such as it is, rests on Cepeda's role as a mediator in the peace accord with the FARC—a role that, in Uribe's telling, somehow implicates him in the murder. Cepeda has demanded that Uribe take his accusations to court rather than air them in public. "Responsibility to the country demands that we turn to institutions and allow justice to clarify the facts based on verifiable evidence," Cepeda wrote. The accusation is serious, the evidence nonexistent, and the political intent transparent.

President Gustavo Petro himself has come under scrutiny this week after The New York Times reported that two federal prosecutors in the United States are investigating him for possible links to drug traffickers. Petro denied the allegation flatly. "Never in my life have I spoken with a drug trafficker," he wrote on X, and he noted that no investigation into such ties exists in Colombia. Instead, he counterattacked, pointing to the far right's own documented ties to organized crime. María José Pizarro, Cepeda's debate chief, questioned whether the U.S. investigation represented foreign interference in Colombian politics, a charge that underscores the campaign's increasingly heated tone.

Cepeda has also begun building formal alliances beyond his own Pacto Histórico coalition. This week, Juan Fernando Cristo, a former interior minister and liberal reformist, officially endorsed Cepeda and declined his own presidential bid. Cristo, who leads the small En Marcha party, framed his decision as a commitment to deepening social reforms while correcting course on policies like Petro's "total peace" strategy, which attempted to negotiate simultaneously with all armed groups. "Colombia must deepen and accelerate social reforms," Cristo said, but he also warned that a new constitutional assembly—a Petro priority—would be "inconvenient and inopportune." The alliance, called the Alliance for Life, represents Cepeda's first major coalition-building success outside the official left.

Electoral integrity itself has become a point of contention. The Petro government has repeatedly demanded access to audit the software used for vote counting, citing concerns about fraud. The electoral registry has resisted, arguing that exposing the code would make the system vulnerable to hacking. This week, Interior Minister Armando Benedetti renewed the request, asking not only to see the software but to audit its source code ahead of the May 31 vote. The Electoral Observation Mission, a civil society watchdog, reported a 99.8 percent correspondence between preliminary counts and final tallies in the March legislative elections, offering reassurance about the system's integrity. But the government's persistent doubts, aired publicly and repeatedly, have cast a shadow over the process.

With less than eight weeks remaining, the race is crystallizing into a three-way contest between Cepeda on the left, Valencia and De la Espriella on the right, and a handful of minor candidates struggling for visibility. Cepeda's lead is substantial but not insurmountable in a runoff. Valencia's momentum is real. De la Espriella's rejection of traditional party backing has become a liability as Valencia courts those same endorsements. The center, which Cepeda is courting, remains fragmented and uncertain. What happens next depends on whether Cepeda can hold his base while genuinely expanding into centrist territory, whether Valencia can consolidate the right behind her candidacy, and whether De la Espriella can recover ground he has lost to his rival. The ballot is set. The campaign is in motion. The outcome remains genuinely open.