"Paz sí, pero no así"? Voter Profiles and Attitudes Toward the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement

Abstract

In October 2016, the proposed peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was narrowly defeated in a referendum that sought its public approval. This paper examines how prior structured political predispositions and attitudes shape voters’ preferences in a referendum. In a combined survey—a face-to-face sample in Bogotá and an online sample—conducted before the plebiscite, we identify voter cleavages using principal component analysis (PCA). We find three consistent components with profiles reflecting whether an individual is a 1) pro-government citizen, 2) a right-conservative voter, and 3) a citizen with an evangelical religious identity. Our findings suggest that voters are heterogeneous, and different predispositions and attitudes clustered in specific types of voters, which in turn shaped these voters’ willingness to endorse the proposed peace agreement.