COLOMBIA: The street was wrong, the polls were right - in fact they underestimated the final result. At the end of the day, Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe had made political history. With 62 per cent of the vote, he became the first Colombian president to be re-elected since the 1940s.
At four o'clock on Sunday, when the polls closed and the count began, in Bogota's vast convention centre where over 700 booths were distributed among the six pavilions, each the size of an aircraft hangar, it took barely 15 minutes to realise that Mr Uribe had triumphed in his bid for re-election in the first round of the poll.
The evidence was as palpable and physical as the piles of voting papers for the president, and his Primero Colombia coalition, grew ever larger in the hands of the members of the panel opening and sorting the ballots.
In this nation of 41 million people, more than 7.3 million votes were cast for the president, with 4.6 million for the combined forces of the opposition. And, as has been the rule in Colombia for decades, the country recorded one of the highest abstention rates in the western world - 55 per cent per cent of the electorate stayed home, only down a few points from the almost 60 per cent abstention rate during legislative elections last march.
For the president, a 53-year-old lawyer and landowner, it was a stunning victory.
For President Bush, it was a great relief to have retained his ally in a country of such strategic, geopolitical importance - particularly so in the face of a rising tide of left-wing and populist tide of anti-US sentiment in Latin America, which is led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
A White House spokeswoman, Eryn Witcher, said Mr Bush called Mr Uribe "to congratulate him on his re-election and commend the Colombian people for their very strong commitment to democracy".
The shift to the hard right in Colombian politics is now confirmed. And the majority has also voted to support a candidate who does not deny that he will seek a further change in the constitution to permit a third mandate in 2010.
The depth and range of Mr Uribe's victory is attributable directly to 40 years of guerrilla war and weak, corrupt governments. The shopkeepers, the small and large farmers, the landowners, the small and large business people, the investors, stockbrokers, bankers, media, the people who give employment and create what little wealth exists, the vast majority of Colombians, have had it with the guerrillas.
While kidnapping and extortion, and the military confrontations with their toll of dead soldiers and policemen continue, a political base for Mr Uribe is assured. He is seen as a "strong man", the only one with the willingness and strength to stand up to the guerrilla enemy and capable of inspiring the Colombian army to crush them.
Immediately after the announcement of his victory, Mr Uribe spoke at length in a downtown hotel ballroom filled to capacity with his supporters. For many, perturbed by the human rights situation in the country, it would have been sometimes hard to recognise the country he described, one with "a freer press", and greater liberties and guarantees for the opposition.
Yet the words that raised the excitement in the room to fever pitch were those in which he referred to "the heroism of our soldiers". It is this conviction - which chimes with the majority of the country, that the military will provide all the answers and finish off the guerrillas - that sustains his popularity.
His left-wing challengers of the Polo Democratica Alternativa have also made political history. With 2.6 million votes, the party has quadrupled its size in its four- year existence. For the first time in Colombian history, the left will now lead the opposition and Mr Uribe will have to govern with a youthful, gutsy, ideologically and politically coherent opposition. Its candidate - Mr Uribe's former law professor, Carols Gaviria - pledged in his speech to keep up the fight for social justice.
Many fear, however, that the result may be a recipe for more dirty war and further crises ahead. For there are several critical issues in the immediate future, of which the unresolved paramilitary demobilisations loom front and centre.