Ecuador’s presidential election is ready to go to an April run-off between incumbent conservative President Daniel Noboa and leftist former lawmaker Luisa González, the country’s electoral council said.
Noboa gained 44.4 per cent of the vote after Sunday’s first round, compared with González’s 44.1 per cent, with 80 per cent of ballot boxes counted. Not one of the other 14 candidates on the ballot gained greater than 4.8 per cent.
The run-off can be a repeat of the snap election that put Noboa in office in 2023.
“If the trend continues, Ecuadorians will return to the polls on April 13,” Diana Atamaint, president of the national electoral council, said in an announcement. Polls within the run-up to the vote had given Noboa an edge.
“We’ve taken just a little time to exit and have fun this great victory,” González said in a speech to supporters. Noboa didn’t immediately make any public comment.
The election took place amid a deepening security crisis as international drug trafficking organisations have violently expanded their presence, driving up murder rates and shocking a rustic popular with American retirees.
Noboa, the 37-year-old son of a banana magnate, took office in November 2023 after beating González and other candidates in a snap election called by his predecessor Guillermo Lasso, who was facing impeachment proceedings.
In office Noboa has launched a crackdown on crime, earning comparisons with El Salvador’s popular strongman President Nayib Bukele.
Jessica Chasiluisa, who returned to Ecuador two years ago after three many years in Spain, said Noboa was changing Ecuador for the higher. “We will’t surrender now on what he’s done,” she said.
But Noboa attracted international criticism last April after he ordered the police to raid the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice-president Jorge Glas, an ally of leftist former president Rafael Correa, who took refuge there as authorities pursued him over corruption claims.
González is best often known as a protégée of Correa, president from 2007 to 2017, who increased public spending underwritten by Chinese loans. Correa is in exile in Belgium to avoid jail after being convicted of corruption.
Paulina Noriega, a teacher, said she was voting for González as she had been frustrated by every day power cuts late last yr, partially as a consequence of droughts that affected hydroelectric generation.
“The best way I see it, this country goes from bad to worse,” she said. “But when the left wins in Ecuador, the center and lower classes do higher.”
Additional reporting by Carla Valdiviezo in Quito
