(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Juan Manuel Santos is the frontrunner ahead of May’s presidential election in Colombia, according to a poll by Invamer Gallup. 34.2 per cent of respondents would vote for the candidate of the U Party in the upcoming vote.
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Juan Manuel Santos is the frontrunner ahead of May’s presidential election in Colombia, according to a poll by Invamer Gallup. 34.2 per cent of respondents would vote for the candidate of the U Party in the upcoming vote.
Noemí Sanín of the Conservative Party (PC) is second with 23.3 per cent, followed by Antanas Mockus of the Green Party (PV) with 10.4 per cent, Gustavo Petro of the Democratic Pole (PD) with 6.3 per cent, Germán Vargas Lleras of Radical Change (CR) with 6.2 per cent, and Rafael Pardo of the Liberal Party (PL) with 5.1 per cent.
Support is much lower for Jairo Enrique Calderón of Liberal Aperture (AL), and Jaime Araújo Rentería of the Social Afro-Colombian Alliance (ASA).
In two run-off scenarios, Santos is ahead of Sanín by a narrow margin, but holds a double-digit lead over Mockus.
Álvaro Uribe has been Colombia’s president since August 2002. In the May 2006 election, he won a new four-year term with 62.2 per cent of all cast ballots. He was able to run again after pro-Uribe lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the Constitutional Court officially sanctioned a plan to allow immediate presidential re-election. After issuing its ruling, the court warned that the clause was not valid for the unlimited re-election of the head of state.
A group of Uribe supporters gathered enough signatures to call a nationwide referendum on whether the current president should be allowed to run for re-election again this year. In September 2009, Congress approved the referendum bill in a late-night vote boycotted by members of the opposition. In February 2010, the Constitutional Court voted 7-2 against the referendum proposal. Uribe said he "accepted" and "respected" the court’s decision.
Immediately after the ruling, Santos confirmed that he would become a presidential candidate for the U Party, which borrows his name from the first letter of the current president’s name.
On Mar. 14, Colombians voted in legislative elections. The U Party garnered the most votes, followed by the pro-Uribe Conservatives and the opposition Liberals.
The PC has supported the Uribe administration since the beginning of his first term. The party did not nominate a candidate to stand against Uribe in the 2006 election. However, this time the PC has Sanín standing against Santos, who is running on a platform of continuing with Uribe’s policies.
On Mar. 25, Carlos Rodado, Santos’s chief of debate and a member of the PC, rejected a threat by the party’s authorities to expel him from their ranks for working with a candidate other than Sanín, saying, "I have been and always will be a conservative of principle, not of convenience. I have not joined the U Party, but the multi-party campaign of Juan Manuel Santos."
The next presidential election is scheduled for May 30. If no candidate garners more than 50 per cent of the vote, a run-off must take place.
Polling Data
If the presidential election were held tomorrow and these were the candidates, which one of them would you vote for?
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Juan Manuel Santos (U)
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34.2%
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Noemí Sanín (PC)
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23.3%
|
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Antanas Mockus (PV)
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10.4%
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Gustavo Petro (PD)
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6.3%
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Germán Vargas Lleras (CR)
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6.2%
|
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Rafael Pardo (PL)
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5.1%
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Jairo Enrique Calderón (AL)
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0.2%
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Jaime Araújo Rentería (ASA)
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0.2%
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Run-off scenarios
Juan Manuel Santos (U) 44.7% – 43.3% Noemí Sanín (PC)
Juan Manuel Santos (U) 53.8% – 31.2% Antanas Mockus (PV)
Source: Invamer Gallup
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,200 Colombian adults, conducted from Mar. 20 to Mar. 22, 2010. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
