Enrique Peñalosa has retaken Gustavo Petro in the most recent CM& election poll for the Bogota mayoral race, while a quarter of those asked said they would not vote for any of the current candidates.
According to the poll jointly realized by newscast CM& and Colombia’s National Consulting Center, the Green Party’s Peñalosa currently has a 3% lead over Socialist Party candidate Petro, at 17% to 20%.
A significant number of those polled expressed lack of satisfaction with any of the current candidates, with 26% saying that if they had to vote now, they would not vote for any of those running.
In the results of a poll released Sunday, July 3, Petro had overtaken Peñalosa — who formerly had a comfortable lead in the race — with 15.4% of votes, compared to Peñalosa’s 14.6%.
Petro stated that the race is a “technical draw,” and that “as far as I can tell, at this moment Uribe has not helped him a lot,” referring to the Green Party candidate’s decision to accept backing from the former president and his Partido de la U.
Peñalosa explained that “opinion polls are difficult and this is a tough competition, Gustavo Petro is very strong; the citizens will have to choose carefully, because choosing a mayor is not like choosing a soccer team or a beauty queen.”
Meanwhile, Gina Parody, a former Partido de la U senator who resigned in protest of the politics of former President Alvaro Uribe, and is currently not running on a party platform, stood at third place, with 13% of the votes from those polled. Votes for former third-favorite Carlos F. Galan, of the Cambio Radical Party, dropped to 7%.