Former Bogotá mayor, Gustavo Petro, at the head of presidential vote intention in Colombia

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The leader of the leftist movement Colombia Humana, Gustavo Petro, leads the polls with 38.3% voting intention, followed by the former center-left presidential candidate Sergio Fajardo, who has 15.9%, almost a year before the Colombian presidential elections.

This is projected by a poll conducted by Invamer between April 13 and 19, carried out with consultations to 1,008 people in 47 localities of the country and hired by Caracol Televisión Blu Radio.

According to the figures, Petro leads Fajardo, former governor of Antioquia, by more than twice the number of votes, followed by vice-president Marta Lucía Ramírez, with 11.8%.

The candidate of the leftist coalition already beats Fajardo in the first electoral round of 2018, in which they were in second and third position, and went to the second round against the current president, Iván Duque.

The poll indicates that the support for Petro, whose participation in the elections is not yet confirmed, is mostly in Bogotá, where he was mayor between 2012 and 2015, with 52.2 %.

According to the poll, Petro, current senator, would win in both urban and rural areas, capitals, in all strata and age groups.

“This is the scare of the corrupt. In both first and second round, we win,” Petro, whose formation has been integrated into a larger one that unites other leftist forces called Pacto Histórico, wrote on social networks, referring to the poll.

In the first round, the poll also indicated that the intention to vote for the former mayor of Barranquilla Alejandro Char is 6.1%. The former mayor of Medellin Federico Gutierrez 5.2%.

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One of the sons of former President Álvaro Uribe, Tomás, has a voting intention of 4.6%. Former senator Juan Manuel Galán, son of murdered political leader Luis Carlos Galán, would obtain 4.4 %, while leftist senator Jorge Robledo appears with 3.7 % and former minister Juan Carlos Pinzón with 1.3 %.

On the other hand, the Invamer poll indicated that 63.2 % disapprove of Duque’s performance as president, while 33.1 % support him. The highest disapproval rate against the ruler is concentrated in Bogotá, where 81.9 % reject his administration.