The election is the first to be held under new rules which seek to reduce the chaos of Colombian elections. In the previous election, there were more than 300 "lists", of which more than 30 received some sort of representation.

The new system is proportional, with the Senate being elected in a country-wide vote, and the House of Representatives being elected in separate district votes. Parties must achieve 2% of the Senate vote in order to gain representation. In order to continue to have legal status ("persona jurídica"), a party must either achieve the Senate quota or receive 1/2 of the quotient in a election. (The quotient is roughly the number of voters divided by the number of seats.) It's believed that less than half of the 20 or so lists competing in tomorrow's election will make the threshold.

(I hope I got all that right.. some of the write-ups are confusing.)

About a third of the parties support the re-election campaign of President Álvaro Uribe, although he does not officially endorse all of these parties. His support includes the traditional Conservative Party, which was decimated in last year's election but is expected to recover about 10% of the vote. Polling seems to indicate that pro-Uribe parties will come close to a majority in the Senate, but there is no guarantee that polls are accurate and no reputable polling company has even tried to estimate the Congressional votes.

In parallel with the parliamentary elections, both the Liberal Party (Colombia's other traditional party) and the Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA) (a left-wing coalition) are holding elections for their presidential candidate. Voters can only vote in one of these primaries; as far as I know there is no formal party registration process.

Four people are competing for the Liberal presidential candidacy, which is in part a manifestation of a deep internal division in the party.

Until Uribe's victory in 2002, the Liberals had been the dominant party in Colombian politics, with the Conservative party as a close second. From 1958 until 1978, the Liberals and Conservatives shared power in a "National Front" coalition, restoring the country to a sort of democracy following the 1953 coup. In the first half of the century, Colombian politics was more of a civil war between the Conservative and Liberal parties, in which hundreds of thousands of people died.

Uribe himself is a former Liberal governor of Antioquia. In 2002, he left the party to seek election on a hard-line neoliberal platform, effectively occupying the political space traditionally occupied by the Conservative Party, which gave him its qualified support. He was also supported by the right wing of the Liberal Party, and managed to win the 2002 election in the first round. Until 2002, Colombian law barred presidents from running for a second term (ever, not just for immediate re-election), but Uribe's supporters successfully managed to change the law to allow for a single re-election.

The Liberal party is divided between "traditional" social democrats (the party is a member of the Socialist International) and a "modernist" wing with neoliberal economic policies. Former president César Gaviria is the head of the party, elected on a platform of internal unification; however, he is known to be on the neoliberal side, supporting ex-defence minister Rafael Pardo.

However, the likely winner of tomorrow's contest is Horacio Serpa, a traditional social democrat, who has been the party's unsuccessful candidate in the previous two elections.

The Polo Democrático Alternativo is a coalition of two important left-wing groupings; it is expected to get between 10 and 15 per cent of parliamentary votes. Last-minute negotiations between the two major forces within the PDA were unable to resolve the question of who the presidential candidate would be, leaving the question to be decided by a popular vote. The two precandidates are in a virtual tie; they are Antonio Navarro Wolf, former leader of M-19 and a popular senator since M-19's demobilisation, and Carlos Gaviria Díaz, a well-known jurist and academic.

Uribe's popularity has been dropping steadily over the past few months. A few months ago, it was commonly believed that he would win the presidential elections on the first round, but there is now some doubt.

The free trade agreement with the United States, which Uribe recently signed, is opposed by a small majority of Colombians; both PDA candidates oppose it, as does Horacio Serpa. The other Liberal precandidates are generally supportive of the deal.

However, the key issue in the election is, as it has been for some time, how to deal with the armed conflict. Uribe's strength in 2002 was largely due to the perception that negotiation was going nowhere; now, the tide is shifting back towards favouring negotiation, ironically in part because of the apparently successful demobilization of the paramilitaries and the hope that the negotiations with the ELN will get somewhere.

I did a bit more research and I think I understand the details a bit better.

The Senate consists of 100 seats, elected in a single nationwide vote with 20 parties (or movements) competing. It's a proportional list system, using the D'Hondt formula, with a 2% threshold. In addition, there are 2 seats for indigenous voters, for which two parties are running.

The House of Representatives consists of 166 seats, 161 of which represent 33 territorial districts ranging in size from 2 seats to 18 seats. These are also proportional lists allocated according to the D'Hondt formula, but the threshold is one-half of the ratio of voters to seats in each district. (So in a district with 18 seats -- Bogotá -- the threshold is 1/36 of the total votes.)

There are also two seats for "negritudes", one for indigenous people, one for colombians living outside of the country, and, the most intriguing, one seat for "political minorities" which is assigned to the political party which received the most votes without winning a seat.

A total of 39 parties are running for the House of Representatives, but I think all, or almost all, of the parties running for the Senate are in that list.

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Originally posted by rici:
And another possibly unique feature: they apparently weren't able to decide whether it should be an open- or closed-list system, so it's both:

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Most of the major senate lists will be open, while most of the house lists will be closed. I can’t say I anticipated this, but it does have a certain logic to it. Many parties are still going to be dominated by local bosses (caciques), even if those bosses now have had to cooperate with others in order to craft lists that can gain the higher vote share needed to guarantee representation under the new PR system, compared to the old SNTV rules. House lists are shorter (because magnitude is lower) and the disitricts coincide with the departments, and hence each has a local political process of its own. So, at least in some parties, it was possible for a few local leaders to come together and agree on a list of candidates and rank them, thereby determining which candidates will be elected (if they obtain their expected vote share). In the Senate, on the other hand, with a nationwide district and lots of local interests to bargain over list construction, most parties would simply find it less costly to simply let the voters–and the various local leaders who will mobilize them–determine the order, rather than to broker the order of such a long list and among so many contending groups. In the larger parties, there will be plenty of seats to go around to satisfy the major leaders. (The ones that expect a smaller number of seats, on the other hand, are more likely to have presented a closed list; likely middle-sized lists, such as the leftist Polo Democrático, tended to present open lists but not with the full 100 candidates that they could have nominated.)

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Originally posted by Wilf Day:
Quote from Matthew Shugart:

... Most of the major senate lists will be open, while most of the house lists will be closed. ...

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Well, that's not what's being reported. 14 of 20 senatorial lists are open, and 315 of 400 house lists are open, according to El Tiempo. (The 400 lists are the result of 39 parties running in 33 districts, but not all running in each district. I think each list makes a separate decision.)

As for how people know which number to mark: Apparently, they are given a booklet with one party per page; each page has the names, numbers and photos of the candidates for that party. The rules says that you cannot mark the book and must return it, so I suppose there are a limited number of them. In the past, Colombian ballots had all that information on them, and were consequently enormous (they were called "sábanas", which means bedsheet.)

In the other countries which I'm familiar with, voters have no such guides. This is the case in Perú, certainly; the consequence is that candidates have to publicize their numbers, which leads to internal fights to get easily memorized numbers (not just small numbers). Typically, candidates distributes little cards with their photos and numbers; voters take the cards with them into the polling station (that's allowed as long as they don't pull them out before they get into the voting booth). If I recall correctly, that's the case in Brazil as well.

I just saw an TV interview with a candidate running in the Peruvian election (which is in about a month); she managed to work her number (17) into the conversation about 20 times in three minutes, in addition to having it emblazened on her t-shirt. It was quite an impressive performance.

ETR: an incorrect paragraph.

[ 12 March 2006: Message edited by: rici ]

The traditional attack against the voting process has been the burning of buses, in an attempt to paralyze public transport and thereby make it more difficult for people to vote. In Bogotá this morning, there were two or thee such incidents, none of which resulted in injuries, but reports indicate that public transit is functioning normally. The government had previously announced that it would provide 100% insurance for vehicles destroyed on election day, a measure intended to avoid private bus-owners withdrawing services.

In other parts of the country, there have been about a dozen incidents reported, but apparently without injuries as well.

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Originally posted by Vansterdam Kid:
How come Columbia hasn't swung in a more left-populist direction the way that the rest of South America did?

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Another answer, I suppose, is that Colombia has a history of centre-left governments, and they were seen as incapable of dealing with the biggest issue in Colombia, the armed conflict. Colombia has been in a state of civil war for years; the government effectively lacks control of a lot of countryside; it's an intolerable situation which Colombians sort of live with.

The armed conflict also uses up a lot of resources, even with the enormous injection of funds from Plan Colombia.

I also think it's overly simplistic to say "South America is swinging to the left". For example, Kirchner is at best a social democrat, and I'd say the same about Lula or Tabaré Vázquez. Not that I'm complaining about them, you understand.

The other thing that is often said about South America (more often in South America than in North America) is that the traditional model of elite-accommodation is breaking down; hence, the victory of "outsiders" like Alberto Fujimori, Hugo Chávez, Álvaro Uribe, Lucio Gutierrez, and (maybe) Evo Morales, and the rhetoric of candidates like Ollanta Humala (which roughly matches the old slogan in Argentina, before Kirchner's victory: Que se vayan todos. "They should all get lost."

But that doesn't apply to Kirchner, really (he is a long-standing member of the PJ, the party founded by Perón), or Vázquez (the Frente Amplio has a reasonably long history as a political party), or even Lula, whose PT is also of long standing and had won a number of state elections. And it certainly doesn't apply to Michelle Bachelet, who more represents continuation than change. (Or at least gradual change in a good direction.)

Then there's the "rise of indigenous movements" analysis, which fails to take into account the diversity of what "indigenous movement" means in different countries. (In Perú, it means almost nothing; one of the lasting effects of Juan Velasco's dramatic reforms was the shift of the Peruvian political divide from oligarchy/indigenous to rich/poor.)

Senate standings (only those over 2%):

*PARTIDO SOCIAL DE UNIDAD NACIONAL 17,45%
*PARTIDO CONSERVADOR COLOMBIANO 16,78%
PARTIDO LIBERAL COLOMBIANO 13,13%
*PARTIDO CAMBIO RADICAL 12,96%
POLO DEMOCRATICO ALTERNATIVO 10,12%
PARTIDO CONVERGENCIA CIUDADANA 8,33%
*MOVIMIENTO ALAS EQUIPO COLOMBIA 4,77%
*PARTIDO COLOMBIA DEMOCRATICA 2,53%
MOVIMIENTO MIRA 2,53%
POR EL PAIS QUE SOÑAMOS 2,06%

I've marked the parties which I think are pro-Uribe with asterisks. Pre-election polling indicated that Uribe would not get a majority in the Senate, but these results seem to show him with one.

In the Liberal primary, Horacio Serpa is running at about 42% against 29% for Rafael Pardo; that's closer than pre-election polls indicated but it's at least the same result.

In the Polo Democrático Alternativo primary, Carlos Gaviria is currently out-polling Antonio Navarro about two-to-one. Pre-election polling indicated a close tie.

So much for opinion polling in Colombia. Or maybe the initial 12% sample is not representative.

I'll check back later.

ETA: with 34% counted and no attempt at formatting:

Party / votes / percent / seats / Con = with, sin = without

*PARTIDO SOCIAL DE UNIDAD NACIONAL 556,684 18.04 21 Con Voto Preferente
*PARTIDO CONSERVADOR COLOMBIANO 515,841 16.71 19 Con Voto Preferente
PARTIDO LIBERAL COLOMBIANO 434,934 14.09 16 Con Voto Preferente
*PARTIDO CAMBIO RADICAL 421,707 13.66 15 Con Voto Preferente
POLO DEMOCRATICO ALTERNATIVO 301,358 9.76 11 Con Voto Preferente
PARTIDO CONVERGENCIA CIUDADANA 212,460 6.88 8 Con Voto Preferente
*MOVIMIENTO ALAS EQUIPO COLOMBIA 129,084 4.18 4 Con Voto Preferente
*PARTIDO COLOMBIA DEMOCRATICA 77,540 2.51 2 Con Voto Preferente
MOVIMIENTO MIRA 75,943 2.46 2 Sin Voto Preferente
MOVIMIENTO COLOMBIA VIVA 65,818 2.13 2 Con Voto Preferente
POR EL PAIS QUE SO?AMOS 58,066 1.88 Sin Voto Preferente

[ 12 March 2006: Message edited by: rici ]

It appears that the three main pro-Uribe parties have a majority in both houses, which suggests that Uribe's support is still strong enough for a first-round victory in the upcoming presidential elections. At least, that is how most commentators are pitching it.

The Conservatives did surprising well while the Liberals did surprising poorly. They both ended up with about 15% of the vote, compared to 10%/30% in the previous election.

The PDA increased its Senatorial representation significantly but in the House of Representatives, they were disadvantaged by the generally small ridings, except in Bogotá which is their centre of strength in any event. (Even in Bogotá, they were only able to achieve about a quarter of the vote.) However, if the coalition manages to keep itself together, they will be an important force in upcoming elections, particularly given the apparent decline of the Liberal party.

I was struck by the fact that both the Liberal and PDA primaries elected what might be considered harder-line (or more leftish) presidential candidates, although I'm not sure that was the actual decision; there are a lot of factors involved, many of which have to do with particular personalities. A pragmatic Liberal/PDA alliance seems likely, in any event.

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It appears that the three main pro-Uribe parties have a majority in both houses, which suggests that Uribe's support is still strong enough for a first-round victory in the upcoming presidential elections. At least, that is how most commentators are pitching it.

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Originally posted by robbie_dee:

When is the presidential election?

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Originally posted by robbie_dee:
Since you indicated that the Liberal and PDA both may be moving "left," is it possible the two could rally around one candidate, particularly if they are able to force a second round?

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The second round is between the top two candidates from the first round. The majority of the opposition to Uribe is from the left; that is, Liberals and the Polo, so they would probably rally around whoever the second-place winner turned out to be.

In general terms, there is little advantage to strategic voting in a two-round election; a vote for an opposition candidate contributes to denying an absolute majority to the front-runner, regardless of which opposition candidate you vote for. In effect, the opposition gets to vote for who will oppose the front-runner. (And in this sense, there is some strategic voting; it might be counterproductive to vote for a candidate who is less likely to beat the front-runner in a two-way competition. However, that's not much of an effect, and people generally seem to vote for their own candidate.)

Of course, in the second round, you can end up voting for the lesser of two evils (or not voting at all); you could consider that strategic voting in some sense of the word, but it is really just pragmatism.

It had been a foregone conclusion that if there were a second round, it would be between Uribe and Serpa (the Liberal candidate). However, the Liberal vote was significantly lower than expected (but still higher than the PDA vote).

He definitely does not mince words: here is part of his message for the site:

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My translation does not really express his rich language; the original is below.

Our ruling class knows with certainty that the construction of a democratic society would carry serious risks to the monopoly of privilege that they have been enjoying for much time. So they have substituted democracy with a subtle technique of simulation, allowing the unwary to believe that they live in a "profound democracy" and thereby legitimizing the exercise of power while simultaneously maintaining the immense majority without social benefits or the benefits of their heritage. These are declared to be sovereign so that they can feel satisfied with their misfortune.

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Original:

Nuestra clase dirigente sabe con certeza que la construcción de una sociedad democrática comporta serios riesgos para el monopolio de privilegios que viene usufructuando desde hace tiempos y ha sustituido entonces esa meta por una técnica sutil de simulación que permite hacer creer a los incautos, que viven en una “democracia profundizada”, legitimando así el ejercicio del poder, y manteniendo simultáneamente, al margen de los beneficios sociales, patrimoniales y extrapatrimoniales, a una inmensa mayoría de la población a la que declaran soberana para que se sienta satisfecha en el infortunio.

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I have absolutely no sense of what is going on in the conflict in Columbia, but I feel that there is a mass 'duping' of politics in Columbia. One Columbian I talked to said "All you hear about on the news is the FARC", which I said don't you think there is a media bais then? Is there still legitimate concerns for an armed rebellion? Are the FARC in someway still fighting for this goal? Is the only way of dealing with the FARC Uribe's politics? Is the FARC Columbia's Al Qaeda ? And I mean that in the sense that whatever FARC is, what most people think of it is a media fantom used to scare people into thinking the government is doing something when its doing something completely different?

The armed conflict has been going on for more than 40 years. It has claimed tens of thousands of lives. There are more than a million internally displaced people (some estimates are even higher). The FARC and the ELN have at times been the effective government in significant parts of rural Colombia.

Yet, in the cities, life is pretty well normal, aside from a general atmosphere of violence (not related to the armed conflict, mostly, but part of a culture inculcated over time). I was always struck by news reports of sacked villages and massacres; the urban reporters speaking dispassionately from the site almost as though they were reporting on a war in a different country, and then getting back into their 4x4s and driving home.

A few years ago, Colombia was the kidnapping capital of the world, with an average of 7-8 kidnappings per day, mostly for extortion. I haven't been in Colombia for a while, but I gather that there has been a huge reduction in kidnappings during Uribe's presidency, whether or not that is due to his policies, and they are now much rarer.

Nonetheless, FARC is believed to be holding something like three thousand hostages, including, for example, Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas, the Green Party candidates for presidency and vice-presidency, who were kidnapped in mid-campaign in 2002. And as far as I can tell, the conflict continues to wreck the lives of many poor rural Colombians.

In the last year, there has been a highly-publicized demobilization of the "paras", the AUC, although it has raised a lot of questions. The ELN is engaged in a dialogue with the government (they recently met in Cuba), and has said that it will not interfere in the current elections. Only the FARC remains belligerently in public -- it has threatened unspecific reprisals if Uribe is re-elected.

I'm pretty skeptical of armed revolutionary groups in general. Although they generally claim to be fighting in support of the poor and the indigenous, what I've seen is a lot of suffering in poor indigenous communities (and I'm not just talking about Colombia here). It's clear that poor indigenous communities suffer without armed "revolutionaries" as well, but one would hope that the cure not be worse than the disease. In any event, after 40 years, I don't see much revolution in the revolutionary armies of Colombia. What I see is men with guns fighting over resources.

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"Please don't ask me any questions about that. I already have two journalists who have been threatened and the attorney-general's office tells me the threats are serious."

The Colombian opposition has denounced the presence of paramilitaries in congress ever since, after the May 2002 elections, a leading paramilitary commander boasted to the press that the paramilitaries now controlled 35% of congress. It held congressional debates; issued requests for investigations to the supreme court and the attorney-general's office; on a September weekend in 2004, every national print media outlet published an extraordinary coordinated reportage on the extent of the paramilitarisation of the country; this journalistic onslaught included maps, names, and methods used by the paramilitaries to infiltrate local governments, take over town halls and state houses, and gain control of entire regions.

Yet every effort to raise the alarm dropped into a bottomless void. No one, not a single government or judicial official whose duty it was to investigate the accusations that assassins and mafiosi or their associates were making laws in the national congress, had ever responded.

By midweek, the furore was such that the chiefs of the two main Uribista parties held a hurried press conference to announce the expulsion from their lists of the five senators and congressmen whose names had been published in El Tiempo.

One week later, President Uribe's cousin, Mario Uribe, chief of the third largest Uribista grouping, Colombia Democratica, reluctantly removed two young congresswomen from his list because of their support for two senior paramilitary commanders wanted in extradition for drug trafficking by American courts.

Within days, all the evicted candidates had been recycled onto the lists of other, smaller Uribista parties, and were presumably headed back to their old congressional seats.

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The Miami Herald names two of them:

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Eleonora Pineda, a 39-year old congresswoman seeking a second term in the coastal region of northern Colombia, said the president of the Democratic Colombia party, Mario Uribe, dropped her and a candidate for the Senate, Rocío Arias.

Other parties connected to President Uribe also have dropped candidates suspected of links to the paramilitaries.

Some paramilitary leaders have even bragged that they already control upward of 35 percent of the national legislature.

All the candidates bounced by their parties for suspected links to the paramilitaries, including Pineda and Arias, joined other political parties and continue campaigning for themselves as well as President Uribe.

"The supposed purification of the pro-Uribe candidates is a farce,'’ Semana columnist Daniel Coronell wrote recently.

“There are no real expulsions for connections with paramilitaries and drug traffickers, [there are] simply transfers.'’

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[ 18 March 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Official reports called it a “comfortable” victory for President Alvaro Uribe. Of the 100 contested seats for the Colombian senate, Uribe’s supporters obtained 61 seats while those counted as opposition (Liberals and the leftist Polo Democratico Alternativo) obtained 29 seats, while “Independent” parties obtained the remaining 10 seats. At the Chamber of Representatives, the seats went 91 for Uribe, 45 for opposition and 30 for independents of the total 166 seats. In practical terms, this means that Uribe counts with an absolute majority for the upcoming legislative agenda which includes ratification of the recently signed Free Trade Agreement with the USA and a number of reforms that will facilitate corporate control over wealth, resources and territories, as well as savings, investments and cheap labor.

More than 60% of the 27 million potential voters abstained from participating in these elections and almost 10%, close to 1 million voters either deposited unmarked ballots or these were invalid. In other words, 60 out of every 100 voters did not vote, 4 voted but did not select candidates, 3 deposited invalid votes, and 1 had their electoral card returned. This mea! ns that Uribe’s candidates obtained less than 19% of electoral support, or less than 4 out of the 10 million votes. If this is compared to the 5.829.958 votes with which Uribe obtained the 53% majority with which he was elected 4 years ago, the President’s popularity is falling. One must remember that Uribe needed to mobilize close to 6.5 million votes at the 2003 referendum his government convened to have the structural adjustment and neoliberal-war reforms “democratically” approved, which he failed to do. This led to a crisis that almost forced his resignation. If Uribe did poorly, the others, it must be said, did much worse.

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With respect to the statistics in the quote are a bit misleading.

First, it's certain that the turn-out was low, roughly equal to the 2002 congressional election, which had a turn-out of 42.8%. The 2006 turnout is not yet known to that detail, since the last report of the "quick count" stopped at 95.4% of the electoral polls. Assuming that those polls represent 95.4% of the electoral population, the 2006 turnout can be estimated as 42.5%, almost identical. In comparison, turnout for the 2002 presidential election was 46.5%; the 1998 results don't indicate a turnout, but the vote total is similar to 2002.

The 2006 election was marked by an extraordinarily large number of spoiled ballots, but it seems to me most likely that this is a result of the new voting rules. Antanas Mockus has charged that many votes for his list may have been rejected because voters erroneously marked a candidate preference, and his list (for reasons which I do not understand) was one of the "closed" lists. There seems to be some ambiguity as to whether an extraneous preferential vote would invalidate a ballot.

Colombian ballots allow the voter to expicitly submit a "blank" vote. (Those of a philosophical bent might speculate whether this is not an inherent contradiction; in order to submit a blank ballot, one has to actually mark it in which case it is certainly not blank.) However, some people simply don't mark their ballots at all; such ballots are not considered blank, but rather unmarked The difference is important, because a blank ballot is valid, and counts towards the calculation of the 2% threshold, whereas an unmarked or incorrectly marked ballot is not considered valid.

If the spoiled ballots were primarily a result of voter confusion, then one would expect considerably fewer spoiled ballots on the presidential vote, where the ballots are much simpler.

In addition, everyone seems to have their own definition of what a pro-Uribe vote actually was, and what an "independent" party is. One could go on speculating, but it is probably better to wait until the actual presidential elections; it seems to me likely that Uribe's support has fallen somewhat since 2002, but we'll see. It is certain that if Uribe does not win on the first round, that will be considered to be an opposition advance; it is less certain (but possible) that he must win on the first round in order to win (which some on the left are saying).

For what it's worth, in 2002 there were a total of 10,297,405 senatorial ballots issued of which 656,158 were unmarked, 355,070 were marked incorrectly, and 454,740 were blank.

In 2006, with 95.4% of the polls counted (but not officially), there were 10,780,668 ballots issued of which 336,539 were unmarked, 1,053,721 were marked incorrectly, and 272,645 were blank.