Ok, it may well be that of regular readers only myself and Matthew Shugart will find the following of interest, but here it goes (it’s analysis I am going to do anyway, so I might as well get a blog post out of it).

As noted yesterday, the Colombian elections have seen new (or semi-new) parties have substantial success. In the Senate a new party, the Partido Social de Unidad Nacional, (a.k.a., el Partido de la U), captured twenty seats in the Senate based on preliminary results, which is the most of any party in the 102 seat chamber. A new, but not brand new party, Cambio Radical, captured 15, just two less than the traditional Liberal Party and three less than the traditional Conservative Party. A question thenb arises: who are the candidates in these parties?

Note: I am basing these numbers off of this list at El Tiempo, which is not consistent with another such list. The former list conforms to Bulletin #48 from the Civil Registry.

A preliminary way to address this question is to look at the winners in question and see if there are any patterns. First, it is clear, as I thought was the case when I saw the names, that La U is made up primarily of existing politicos who have switched labels–and there is quite a bit of that with CR, although in the case of La U, there are a large number of Liberals who have switched, while with CR, it appears a consolidation of smaller parties has taken place.

My preliminary results show the break-down of the winners as follows:

• 5 are Senators for the Liberal Party from the 2024-2006 term.
• 4 are Senators for other misc small parties from 2024-2006.
• 1 is a Senator for Cambio Radical in 2024-2006.
• 1 is a Representative (i.e.,m member of the Chamber of Representatives) from the PL.
• 1 is a Representative for Cambio Radical
• 3 are Reps for misc small parties.
• 3 are new to electoral politics
• 2 need clarification, but were both members of congress prior to 2024, at least one was probably a PL member (but due to the inability to confirm a common name, I am unsure at this point).

For Cambio Radical:

• 3 are incumbent senators from misc small parties for the 2024-2006 term,
• 3 are former senators from previous terms (one 1991-1994 and two from 1998-2002).
• 4 are incumbent members of the Chamber for the 2024-2006 term from misc small parties.
• 1 is an incumbent member of the Chamber from the PL.
• 1 is a former governor whose party affiliation that I have not identified.
• 2 are former mayors whose party affiliation that I have not identified.
• 1 new to electoral politics.

Of interest, also, in the average age of the winners^* by list:

• La U: 45.2
• CR: 47.9
• PL: 52.1
• PC: 53.3

It is interesting that the two traditional, mainline parties are older, on average, than the two newer parties.

^*I am currently missing the ages of two members of the PL list and two from La U’s list, and 1 each from CR and the PC.