An April presidential run-off in Ecuador will pit incumbent Daniel Noboa against leftist Luisa González, in an unexpectedly tight contest featuring the same two candidates who were in a 2023 snap election.
Most polls had predicted Mr Noboa, the 37-year-old heir to a business fortune, would win, with some even predicting an outright victory in a single round. But he was less than a point ahead of Ms González on Sunday with the two headed for a run-off, which could give the role of kingmakers to the candidates in third and fourth place.
With more than 92 per cent of ballot boxes counted, Mr Noboa had a share of 44.3 per cent to Ms González’s 43.8 per cent.
Mr Noboa cheered what he said was a victory against “Old Ecuador” in a written statement on Monday morning, promising to “fight like it was the first day”. He did not speak to supporters on Sunday night.
Mr Noboa has campaigned on a 15 per cent cut in violent deaths, a reduction in prison violence and the capture of major gang leaders during 15 months in office, and vowed to keep deploying the military on the streets and in prisons to fight insecurity.
But the leftist Ms González (47), along with Mr Noboa’s 14 other first-round rivals, called for more efforts to fight the drug trade-related crime that has rocked Ecuador in recent years.
Ms González, a protege of former president Rafael Correa, has said she would fight crime with major military and police operations, pursue corrupt judges and prosecutors and roll out a social spending plan in the most violent areas.
“We always planned on a second round,” Ms González said in a Monday morning interview with television channel Teleamazonas, adding she was seeking unity.
“The votes that we obtained in this first phase of the election shows that people want change, that they are not willing to support four more years of what we have lived this year and a half,” she said.
Indigenous leader Leonidas Iza, who led protests that nearly unseated Mr Noboa’s predecessor, was tallying 5.26 per cent of the votes, while Andrea González, once the vice-presidential candidate for an assassinated anti-corruption crusader, won 2.7 per cent.
Mr Iza, congratulated by Luisa González in remarks on Sunday night, is seen as unlikely to back Mr Noboa, whom he has accused of improvising his policies and of wanting to privatise state assets. But he has also heavily criticised Mr Correa.
Mr Iza said on Sunday night his movement would decide collectively who to support in the run-off.
Andrea González, who is no relation to Luisa Gonzáles, was running with Fernando Villavicencio in 2023 when he was shot while leaving a campaign rally.
Mr Villavicencio was vocally opposed to Mr Correa, who, like several major figures in his decade-long government, has been convicted of graft but has always denied wrongdoing.
Andrea González ran this time for the movement of former president Lucio Gutierrez, who has said he would support Mr Noboa in a second round. She told Teleamazonas in her own interview on Monday morning she would not hold dialogue with “21st-century socialism”, a reference to Mr Correa’s movement. − Reuters
