The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the number of violent acts within the armedconflict on the levels of electoral abstention, taking as a case study the departmental elections togovernor and House of Representatives of the southwestern region of Colombia between 2002 and2015. The article is framed by the need to examine the characteristics and contextual implicationsof the armed conflict in the electoral dynamics of the country. For this, a correlational / longitudinalquantitative analysis is carried out, with electoral abstention data obtained from 24 popular electionprocesses and the acts of violence from the last two decades registered by the National Center forHistorical Memory in this region. The results indicate a tendency to decrease, both in violence derivedfrom the armed conflict and in electoral abstention. Additionally, the existence of a global correlationbetween levels of violence and abstention is ruled out, but the correlation of abstention with selectiveassassinations and terrorist attacks is confirmed. Finally, the possible causes of these phenomena andthe repercussions they have on the democratic quality of Colombia are discussed.