More than 3 percent of voters tendered protest ballots, indicating dissatisfaction with both candidates.
Mockus had catapulted into early contention in opinion polls but stumbled with a series of gaffes that had Colombians questioning his abilities. In the May 30 first round, Santos fell just shy of the simple majority needed for victory.
Violence marred yesterday’s vote as seven police officers and three soldiers were killed in separate attacks blamed on leftist rebels.
The police were killed when a roadside bomb ripped apart their truck on a routine patrol in Colombia’s northeast, authorities said, while the soldiers died in an ambush on an army patrol carrying election material to a town in the eastern plains. Defense Minister Gabriel Silva blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for the ambush and the smaller National Liberation Army was believed responsible for the bombing.
Independent electoral observers said rebels burned ballots and disturbed voting in isolated municipalities in eight of Colombia’s 32 states.
Voter turnout was down an estimated 11 percent from the May 30 vote amid heavy rains across much of the country and the distraction of World Cup soccer, Colombia’s National Electoral Council reported.
The persistence of the rebel threat was a central issue in the campaign to succeed Uribe, who was barred from running for a third term.
Santos’s margin of victory was superior to the 62 percent garnered by Uribe in his 2006 reelection.
Santos, a 58-year-old economist, won the endorsement of most of the country’s political establishment after the first round.
He promises to build on Uribe’s security gains, but also vowed to help the poor in a nation notorious for income inequality; more than two in five of its 44 million people live on less than $2 a day.
Mockus’s clean-government campaign was an early steamrolling sensation, and those who voted for him praised his refreshing integrity and promise to rid Colombia of the endemic corruption that he says is at the root of its half-century-old civil conflict.
