Everyone woke up worried
As of March 14th, we assign a 40% probability to a Petro victory.
Petro or the center-right candidate have a similar predicament, namely the support of its base and the support of the undecided, swing voters, not aligned politically. This is a delicate and beautiful balance to be forged either by Petro or his conservative adversary if either of them wants to be the next president.
Petro’s speech emphasized love; Fico’s speech centered around unity. Now, if you woke up worried as well, all we can tell you that the key element will be the balance between empathy and fear. Nothing is decided yet.
• Gustavo Petro woke up worried because, although on March 13th he obtained 4.5 million votes, and was the sole winner, the pole position, the gold medal of the coalitions, this is less than the 4.8 million he got on the first round in 2018.
• Conservatives woke up worried because despite their amazing congressional result, 2.2 million Senate votes, their presidential candidate David Barguil only got 629 thousand.
• In general, the political left woke up worried because they increased their share of Congress from 24% to 37%, a historical result, but insufficient to govern. They would need the full support of liberals, and still would be close to 50/50 with the political right.
• However, the political right woke up worried because, compared with 2018, they fell from 69 to 55 senators, a difficult result to swallow. If a center-right candidate were to win, he would still need the support of the 15 liberal senators for governability.
Now read on...
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