The territorial roots of politics.

Many analysts have commented with some concern on the unusual polarization of public opinion in the electoral campaign in which we have been immersed since the beginning of 2018.

The concern is justified, Colombia was accustomed from the National Front to less clear-cut and more negotiable oppositions between a political class that invariably united behind the winner in the presidential elections.

This style has lost validity since the emergence of Uribism in 2002.

Juan Manuel Santos tried to revive it in 2010, but his attempt to recreate “national unity” behind his government failed in the face of the controversy surrounding the peace agreement with the FARC.

We might have thought that, after the agreement, polarization would moderate again.

However, the climate of this campaign belies these hopes. In reality, this polarization is probably more than a temporary tension in opinion around a salient issue.

Perhaps we are witnessing a more profound change in the functioning of the Colombian political regime around a structural axis of conflict between majority and opposition, and no longer based on broad center coalitions as was the norm at the end of the last century.

An element comes to strongly support this hypothesis from electoral geography: the polarization of discourses has been responded to by territorial polarization.

Political science has shown for more than a century that electoral preferences take lasting root in territories.