Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernández, in search of support. Who goes with whom?

Presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, the night of the first round, in Bogotá.Fernando Vergara (AP)

So close and yet so far.

Although Gustavo Petro, the inexhaustible leftist leader at the head of the Historical Pact, was the clear winner of the first round of the presidential elections this Sunday with 40% of the votes, his path to reach the House of Nariño is not clear.

His surprise rival in the final instance, the independent Rodolfo Hernández, a populist and unclassifiable construction businessman who took 28% of the votes, marks the beginning of a new campaign in the 20 days remaining for the second lap.

The last polls that were known before the outcome of this Sunday pointed to some tremendously close second-round scenarios between Petro and Hernández, of a technical tie.

The coming weeks will see a reconfiguration of the political scene,

The result of the first round is a huge blow for the traditional parties, which must now decide how they will support one of the two finalists, who have been staunch critics of political elites in the past.

Both Petro and Hernández represent radical visions of change, according to an electoral analysis by the political risk consultancy Colombia Risk Analysis.

The former mayor of Bogotá embodies a change for the social and economic order, while that of Bucaramanga a challenge against the political class.

Both will have to explain the reasons why their version of the change is better for the country if they want to gather support that will allow them to tip the scales.

The two options have been far from the great political structures that Federico Gutiérrez had, the candidate of the right-wing coalition that came third with 24% of the votes.

Fico, as everyone knows him, had joined the Conservative Party, that of La U and even the ruling party of the Liberal Party, also the 'machines' of the Char family in the Caribbean, and had the support of former presidents César Gaviria, Andrés Pastrana and Álvaro Uribe, among others.

After insistently attacking Petro as a danger to democracy, it did not take Gutiérrez more than a few hours to express his clear support for Rodolfo Hernández in the same speech in which he acknowledged his defeat, although it is not clear that all the parties that supported it.

In full electoral hangover, some reactions have exposed the resistance that Petro still arouses in various sectors.

One of the first architects of the coalition backing Gutiérrez, former finance minister Juan Carlos Echeverry, a moderate center-right figure, launched it against the former mayor of Bogotá.

"A better engineer than a guerrilla," he wrote on his social networks to attack Petro's past in the M-19, a movement that laid down its arms more than 30 years ago and played a leading role in the Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1991 political letter. Faced with the controversy that his message aroused, Echeverry returned to the attack: “I did not want to hurt feelings.

There is no doubt: better sober engineer than drunken senator”, he wrote then,

In gross numbers, Petro obtained 8.5 million votes while Hernández approached six million.

If the engineer, as he likes to be called, manages to add Gutiérrez's, he would climb to 11 million, an imprecise calculation that many observers repeat.

A study by the National Consulting Center on April 21, which tried to measure these vote migration scenarios, pointed out that in a second round between Petro and Hernández, 60% of Gutiérrez's votes would go with 'the engineer' and only 8% with Petro, while 53% of those of the center candidate Sergio Fajardo would go with Hernández and 18% with Petro.

Those accounts would leave the former mayor of Bucaramanga with just under 9.5 million votes and Petro with more than nine.

In any case,

"Petro has won an important victory, but now it is at a great disadvantage," says Sergio Guzmán, from Colombia Risk Analysis.

He had made his campaign a contrast between change and continuity where he clearly represented change.

Now he has three weeks to turn the narrative around and try to present Rodolfo Hernández as a far-right Nazi sympathizer and supporter of former President Álvaro Uribe

It is unlikely that he will be successful in this endeavor,” he notes.

In part, because Petro has also been highly critical of centrists who refused to join his campaign, he will now have a harder time seducing them.

Given such short distances, Fajardo's support is desirable, despite the fact that on Sunday he obtained less than 5% of the preferences, without even reaching one million votes.

The former governor of Antioquia has avoided singing his vote for now, but in the past he has had approaches with Hernández that did not come to fruition.

Although they have diametrically opposite personalities, Fajardo has highlighted that he unites an identity around the fight against corruption.

“I don't know how valuable my voice is at this stage.

I have spoken with Rodolfo in the past, we know each other.

Last night he called me and said he wanted to talk to me.

On Petro's side, no one.

But we have to land calmly and wisely.

I want to contribute”, Fajardo said this Monday.

The Hope Center Coalition that supported his candidacy has stated that "it has fulfilled the political purposes for which it was established," so its members are released for the second round.

Other prominent center figures, such as the former Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria, have already winked at Petro's candidacy and it is foreseeable that they will land in the Historical Pact.

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