Abelardo De la Espriella’s victory in the first round of the presidential election not only altered electoral calculations ahead of the runoff. It also confirmed a much deeper transformation: the definitive disappearance of the Colombian right as it had been known over the past two decades.
What happened at the ballot box was not merely the unexpected triumph of one candidate over another. It was confirmation that a new political culture has taken root among a significant portion of the electorate and that the traditional figures of the right no longer understand the historical moment the country is going through.
For years, Colombia’s political debate was organized around a relatively stable confrontation between Uribismo and its opponents. Even after Gustavo Petro’s arrival to the presidency, the traditional right still considered itself the natural alternative for regaining power.
However, the first round has shown that the contest is no longer taking place between the left and the traditional right, but between the left and a new populist, emotional, and deeply confrontational right that has managed to displace those who for years monopolized the representation of that ideological sector.
Colombia’s new right in the post-Uribe era
The major news of election day was not simply that Abelardo De la Espriella outperformed the government-backed left-wing candidate Ivan Cepeda. What was truly significant was the scale of his victory over Paloma Valencia, the candidate who represented the continuation of the Uribista tradition.
For much of the past twenty years, Uribismo was the dominant force on the Colombian right. Its leaders shaped governments, defined national debates, and built a recognizable political identity for millions of voters, with overwhelming success. However, the first-round results suggest that historical cycle has come to an end.
The paradox is obvious. The person who ultimately certified the decline of that hegemony was a leader who, at different moments in his public career, drew precisely from that same political space. But De la Espriella understood before anyone else that a growing segment of conservative voters was no longer looking for the traditional codes of the Colombian right. They were no longer demanding institutional prudence or carefully crafted speeches. They were looking for something entirely different: confrontation, rupture, and a narrative of permanent indignation.
In that context, Uribismo appeared as a force associated with the past. What for years had been seen as firmness began to look like moderation. What once represented rebellion came to be perceived as the establishment. Furthermore, the strategy—perhaps forced by the circumstances—of the Uribista candidate seeking allies in the center-right proved to be more a demonstration of ideological contradiction than a lifeline against the populist phenomenon represented by De la Espriella.
The reality is that her strategy consisted of broadening her spectrum of support through outreach to the center-right and moderate sectors. On paper, it seemed like a reasonable decision. At other moments in Colombia’s recent history, building broad alliances would have been a competitive advantage.
But the current political context is different. While Valencia sought to attract moderate voters, a significant portion of her natural base was moving toward a more radical and emotionally intense option.
Many conservative voters were not looking for a candidate capable of building bridges. They were looking for a candidate capable of expressing their discontent. In De la Espriella, they found precisely that voice. They found the noise, the stridency, and the language of confrontation they consider appropriate for the current political moment.
The consequence was that the Uribista candidate ended up trapped between two spaces. She failed to win enough moderate support and, at the same time, lost a significant share of her traditional electorate to an alternative that better interpreted the new mood within the right.
The influence of a global trend
Colombia is not an exception. Rather, it appears to be joining a trend that has already transformed much of the Western world’s democracies, and not necessarily for the better.
In Argentina, Javier Milei managed to overwhelm the traditional right and left no political space for figures who had represented the conservative sector for years. In the United States, Donald Trump irreversibly transformed the Republican Party and displaced many of its historical currents. In Chile, Jose Antonio Kast—the son of a proud former Nazi—built an alternative capable of challenging the traditional expressions of the center-right.
What unites these phenomena is not a uniform ideology but a particular way of doing politics. These are leaderships that prioritize confrontation over consensus, that turn communication into an emotional rather than rational tool, and that present the most complex problems through simple solutions and easily consumable messages.
De la Espriella’s campaign fit perfectly within that logic. Its success is not explained solely by his proposals or by the exhaustion of his opponents. It also reflects a precise understanding of the new mechanisms through which political influence is built in the 21st century.
¡Van para afuera!
Firme por la Patria. 🫡
(A.D.L.E) 🇨🇴🐅 pic.twitter.com/KoVRwmDg71— Abelardo De La Espriella (@ABDELAESPRIELLA) June 1, 2026
The politics of thirty seconds
Much of the presidential campaign unfolded in a setting radically different from the one known by previous generations of political leaders. Today, social media determines a large part of public conversation and rewards messages that generate immediate impact.
In that ecosystem, complexity becomes a disadvantage. Nuance rarely goes viral. Lengthy explanations lose out to brief slogans. Outrage travels faster than reflection.
De la Espriella built a candidacy perfectly adapted to that reality. Music, staging, phrases designed to circulate on social media, forceful messages, and a constant willingness to engage in controversy were all part of a strategy that many observers considered excessive or superficial, but which ultimately proved enormously effective electorally.
The new right has understood that much of the contemporary political battle is fought on the terrain of emotions. It is not so much about persuading through complex arguments as it is about mobilizing immediate feelings. Anger, fear, frustration, or hope become far more powerful instruments of mobilization than any technical government program.
What is simple—even infantilized—is enough to win elections in an era of irrationality and the glorification of ignorance. “Firm for the homeland” is the empty slogan that has allowed this lawyer, who has filled his coffers by defending some of the darkest criminal elements in this country, to prevail over everyone. He has needed nothing more: channeling frustration and, above all, the anger of the masses in its most classical conception.
Nietzsche, Plato, Ortega y Gasset, and Le Bon addressed this phenomenon in their time, which today appears before the exhausted eyes of what remains of a cultivated society as the worst of realities.
A new polarization
The presidential runoff will pit Ivan Cepeda against Abelardo De la Espriella, but the political significance of that confrontation goes beyond both candidates.
What is emerging is a form of polarization different from the one Colombia had known over recent decades. It is no longer simply a dispute between the left and the right. The novelty lies in the fact that the traditional right has been replaced by a new political expression that shares characteristics with similar movements across numerous Western countries.
The result is a political landscape that is increasingly emotional, increasingly polarized, and increasingly shaped by the confrontational dynamics of social media. For its supporters, this new right represents a response to the exhaustion of traditional political elites. For its detractors, it symbolizes the extreme simplification of complex problems and the replacement of rational debate with the permanent mobilization of emotions.
The left would do well not to fall into the same trap, because the confrontation of positions that seek not agreement but insult and the “pulverization”—as De la Espriella himself foreshadowed—of the other side may help win elections, but they do absolutely nothing to solve problems and are even less sustainable over time as an effective political method.
Whatever the outcome of the runoff, the first round has already produced a conclusion that is difficult to dispute. The political force that dominated the Colombian right for much of the 21st century has ceased to be the primary reference point for its own electorate. Colombia, certainly, has not escaped this form of decay that is ravaging minds across the West.
Today, in the place of that traditional right, a new right has emerged—one that speaks a different language, uses different tools, and connects with a generation of voters deeply disillusioned with traditional politics. Abelardo De la Espriella‘s victory did not just change an election. It may also have marked the beginning of a new political era in Colombia.