Partido de la U presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos and Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus are neck-and-neck in the most recent voter poll, released Friday morning by Datexco.
According to the poll, in which 1,921 people were asked, “If the elections were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?” 35% of respondents would vote for Santos and 34% for Mockus.
Factoring in the margin of error, El Tiempo says this is a “technical tie” between the two candidates.
Trailing behind the two front-runners were the Conservative Party’s Noemi Sanin with 9% of the vote, Polo Democratico’s Gustavo Petro with 5%, Cambio Radical’s German Vargas Lleras with 3%, and Liberal Party’s Rafael Pardo with 2%.
In the likely event that neither candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the first round, a second round runoff would be held between the two leading candidates.
According to the poll, in the case of a runoff between Santos and Mockus, 45% of respondents would vote for Mockus, and 44% for Santos, with 11% either not responding, saying they would cast a blank vote, or not vote.
The small difference in the second round, according to Cesar Valderrama, a Datexco consultant, means that nothing is certain in regards to the outcome.
Valderrama, speaking to El Tiempo, explained that while the most recent Datexco poll in itself does little to shed light on who will win the election on May 30, taken in context with polls from the last few weeks, it shows a concrete trend of Santos support rising and Mockus support falling.
According to Valderrama, much of this can be attributed to a large flow of supporters of current President Alvaro Uribe who had initially joined up with the Mockus camp, but later decided to return to support Santos, who many see as Uribe’s protege.
The Datexco poll follows the release of a CM& poll on Thursday night, which also showed Santos gaining and Mockus falling back.
According to the CM& poll, in the first round of the election, Santos can count on the intended votes of 39% of the population, while Mockus can count on 34%.
For the second round Santos gained 47% of the vote compared to Mockus’ 46%.
