The previous GeoCurrents post on the 2026 Colombian election argued that Colombia, like most Latin American countries, does not have the stark urban/rural electoral divide that now characterizes the United States. The post showed that in Colombia’s conservative central region, cities and rural areas alike generally voted for the rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, with the important exception of Bogotá.
Colombia’s Caribbean region, however, exhibited a different pattern. As can be seen on the first map posted below, this part of the country solidly favored the losing leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda. But as the second map shows, de la Espriella triumphed in many of the region’s municipalities (or local districts), often by a significant margin. Most of these right-leaning areas are in the interior portion of the region and thus have significant connections with Colombia’s conservative central highlands, although quite a few are near or even on the coast. More important, most of these conservative-voting areas are characterized by low population densities. In contrast, the largest cities of the region all favored the left. A degree of urban/rural political differentiation thus seems evident.
The urban/rural political divide in Colombia’s Caribbean region, however, is not pronounced. As can also be seen on the map posted above, the Caribbean municipalities that voted most heavily for the left actually tend to be located in more peripheral areas. A map limited to Bolivar Department (posted below) allows us to explore these patterns in more detail. As can be seen, four of the five municipalities containing the department’s largest cities were carried by Cepeda. But some of the “bluest” (rightwing-voting) as well as some of the “darkest magenta” (leftwing-voting) municipalities are sparsely populated and essentially non-urban. As a result, we can only generalize about the political orientation of the Caribbean region’s largest cities, which favored the left, although not overwhelmingly. No generalizations seem possible about the department’s lightly populated municipalities. Here, local factors tend to be far more important than population density. In particular, the Colombia’s Caribbean countryside has long been noted for its “political machines” and patron-client networks, which can largely determine election results at the local level.
Although Colombia’s Caribbean region has been tending left in recent elections, it does not have the consistently leftwing orientation that characterizes the Pacific coastal region and the southern highlands. As can be seen in the map set posted below, in 2018 five of the region’s seven departments favored the victorious rightwing candidate Ivan Duque, over Gustavo Petro of the left. Four years later, Petro swept the Caribbean region and won the national election. Conservative Colombians hoped that de la Espriella would have a better showing in the region in 2026, as he is a native son. Although born in Bogotá, de la Espriella was reared in Monterío, the capital of Cordoba Department, located roughly 31 miles (50 km) from the Caribbean Sea. He speaks with a costeño (Caribbean coastal) accent, has supposedly identified himself as “costeñísimo,” and used the slogan “costeño vota a costeño” in his campaign. This regionalist strategy was not successful.
