Ecuador’s presidential election heads to second round

Ecuador’s next president will be decided by a run-off vote in mid-April, following a tighter-than-expected first round between the conservative incumbent leader and a left-wing lawyer on Sunday.

The elections come as the country struggles to contain gang violence — related to the trafficking of cocaine — that has mushroomed in recent years.

Daniel Noboa, who has been president since 2023, had hoped to secure enough ballots to avoid a second round. To do so, he needed to secure at least 50% of the vote or win 40% with a 10-point margin of victory over his nearest rival.

However, Luisa González, a mentee of the influential former president Rafael Correa, did much better than pollsters had expected, finishing a close second.

After 91% of votes had been tallied, Noboa edged González by 44.3% to 43.8%, with the other 14 candidates trailing far behind them.

The pair were both relative political newcomers when they faced each other in the closely contested second round of the 2023 presidential elections.

Noboa, 37, the heir to a large fortune built on banana exports, began his political career in 2021, when he was elected to the National Assembly and chaired its Economic Development Commission.

He surprised analysts by coming second in the first round of the 2023 snap election, which followed then president Guillermo Lasso’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly.

González, 47, was catapulted to political prominence in 2023 when she became the presidential candidate for Citizen Revolution, Correa’s leftist party.

Correa, who served as the country’s leader from 2007 to 2017, was sentenced in absentia in 2020 over corruption charges.

Under Noboa’s presidency, Ecuadorians continue to feel the effects of a surge in gang-led violence and of regular power outages.

Last January, a gang leader broke out of prison and gang members took a television crew hostage live on air. In response, Noboa ordered a war against the gangs, mobilising the military in parts of the country where organised crime is now entrenched.

Although the murder rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023 to 38.76 per 100,000 people last year, it is far higher than the rate of 6.85 per 100,000 people in 2019.

Noboa argues that his tough-on-crime stance is having an effect. But his critics say not enough is being done.

There are also concerns over some of his actions, including his decision last year to allow a police raid on Mexico’s embassy in the capital, Quito, where Ecuador’s former Vice President Jorge Glas was living.

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González has told her supporters that she will be more effective than Noboa against crime and will improve the economy.

Over the weekend, she promised to “change the dark reality” of a country where ”no one feels safe”.