Trump-backed de la Espriella leads razor-thin Colombia presidential runoff

Abelardo de la Espriella moved to the brink of Colombia’s presidency on the strength of a razor-thin runoff and an open endorsement from Donald Trump, a combination that could quickly reshape Bogotá’s ties with Washington. Preliminary results showed the lawyer and political newcomer ahead of left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda by less than one percentage point, with 12,914,381 votes to Cepeda’s 12,663,687, one of the highest vote totals in Colombian history.

The result carries immediate weight far beyond Colombia’s borders. Trump backed de la Espriella on June 2, saying the outcome was crucial to Colombia’s future and its relationship with the United States, then urged Colombians to support him in the June 21 runoff. De la Espriella answered by pledging much closer ties with Washington and deeper cooperation on security and crime, a message aimed squarely at voters uneasy with years of political drift and rising violence.

For the United States, a de la Espriella victory would likely mean a sharp turn back toward the security-first relationship that long defined the bilateral agenda. Colombia has been one of Washington’s most important partners in Latin America, especially on counternarcotics and intelligence sharing, but those links frayed under Gustavo Petro amid disputes over drug policy, U.S. aid, tariffs and criticism of Colombia’s anti-drug campaign. A president aligned with Trump would be expected to revive cooperation on interdiction and migration enforcement, while putting less emphasis on the social-policy approach Petro favored.

The political backlash was immediate. Petro accused Trump of interfering in Colombia’s internal politics, and Democratic lawmakers in the United States later denounced the endorsement as brazen interference and called for an investigation. That dispute raised the stakes of the runoff even before ballots were counted, turning a Colombian presidential contest into a test of how far Washington should go in shaping the region’s politics.

De la Espriella, who finished first in the May 31 first round before facing Cepeda in the runoff, entered the race as a hard-right outsider with no prior elected office. If Colombian electoral authorities formally confirm the result, his win would mark a decisive shift back to the right and likely pull Bogotá closer to the Trump administration while nudging Colombia toward a more conservative regional alignment in Latin America.