Ecuadorians will vote on February 9 to elect the new President, as well as the 137 members of the National Assembly, and representatives to the Andean Parliament. According to the latest polls, the current president and the candidate representing Correism will contest the presidential seat.
According to Ecuadorian electoral law, presidential elections are held in two rounds. The two candidates who obtain the most votes in the first round will advance to the second round unless one of them obtains more than 40% of the votes and has a 10% advantage over the other candidate.
Most polls indicate that the right-wing Daniel Noboa, the current president of the country, and progressive Luisa González, the representative of the Citizen’s Revolution, are in the lead, all the other candidates are far behind. Likewise, almost all of them give the current president first place.
The latest polls
The electoral law allows the dissemination of the results of the polls until January 29, after which it is forbidden to disseminate data so as not to influence the decisions of the citizens. The pollster IPSOS projects that 45.5% of Ecuadorians will vote for Daniel Noboa, while Luisa González will receive 31.3% of the votes (which, if so, would give the President the victory in a single round); the right-wing candidate Andrea González appears far behind (5.1%) and the left-wing Leonidas Iza father still (2.4%).
On the other hand, the company Informe Confidencial maintains that 37% of Ecuadorians will vote for Noboa, while Luisa González will obtain 29% (if this survey is correct, there would be a second round of voting). Andrea González is in third place with 6%, followed by the centrist Jimmy Jairala (4%).
The pollster Comunicaliza affirmed, on January 24, that 38.1% of voters will vote for Noboa, while Luisa González will reach 32%. On its part, the Telcodata poll published its data in which Noboa would obtain 45.9%, while González would be in second place with 43.2%.
The only pollster that projects a first round victory for the Correista candidate is the firm Negocios y Estrategias. On January 21, they reported that she would reach 41% of the valid votes, against 36% for Noboa, which would put them in a second electoral round.
A controversial electoral campaign
Ecuador’s current president, Daniel Noboa, is seeking re-election after serving the last year of Guillermo Lasso’s truncated term after he activated the cross-death mechanism. His electoral campaign, marked by a clear opposition to Correaism, has been surrounded by controversy. The main issue being his government suspending the elected Vice President, Veronica Abad, and unilaterally appointing Cynthia Gellibert as the second in command. With this move, Noboa intended to prevent Abad, a critic of the government, from assuming the presidency while campaigning.
According to electoral law, no public official can carry out an electoral campaign or make use of State resources to promote himself, so he should request a leave of absence before developing proselytizing activities. Noboa’s decision to circumvent this dilemma was extremely controversial. He decided to resign for a few hours or days while campaigning (entrusting power to an official he unilaterally chose) and then resumed the Presidency. He has taken this measure on several occasions.
However, on February 3, days before the election, the Constitutional Court (with eight out of nine votes in favor) declared that it is illegal for the person who assumes the presidency in Noboa’s absence to be someone other than Vice President Abad. According to the Constitutional Court, Noboa’s decrees in this regard “directly affect the constitutional rules of replacement of the office of president in his temporary absence and have national repercussions.”
Several constitutional experts and Vice President Abad herself have declared that Noboa’s decision constitutes a coup d’etat. However, despite the opinions and declarations of several constitutional bodies, Noboa has not had any opposition regarding his political and electoral strategy, which has caused many people involved in the campaign of Luisa González and other candidates to question whether this will indeed be a fair electoral campaign.
Why are these elections so polarized?
Peoples Dispatch spoke to Adrián López, a political scientist, professor, and researcher at the Central University of Ecuador about the political impact of these elections. According to López, the great polarization of the country is similar to that of previous processes, in which, despite the large number of candidates, the majority of the vote is grouped in a few options.
This is due, to a large extent, “to the psychological effect and the mechanical effect on voting. [The former] refers to the idea of voters not wanting to waste their vote on a candidate who has no real chance of winning, or at least has the option of countering a candidate who is the opposite of them.” Added to this is the mechanical effect that, due to the very structure of the electoral campaign, benefits the candidates who in theory would go on to the second round.
However, López also clarifies that in this election the particularity lies in the fact that the great majority of votes will be centered not on three or four candidates, but on the same two that advanced to the second round in the past presidential elections of 2023. “This is because the past elections corresponded to early elections, so this election seems to be a re-run of the past one or, if you want to see it that way, as a ‘third electoral round.'”
Regarding the polarization in the country, the election of new members of assembly should be considered, which could offer “an interesting legislative composition,” affirmed López.
Regarding the most relevant issues ahead of the election, López says that the two main candidates have expressed clear discrepancies concerning “the economic model, foreign policy, the distributive and redistributive models of the State, the definition of the role of the State in society and, this is very important, with the democratic character of the Ecuadorian State.”
Competing visions for the future of Ecuador
Indeed, the two candidates have tried to differentiate themselves from their most important opponents in the aforementioned aspects. Noboa proposes an economy close to neoliberalism, Washington, and a less active state in the application of public policies. On the other hand, González has shown herself as a president who will strengthen the role of the State, diplomatic relations with the progressive governments of the region, and build a more redistributive economy.
In this sense, it seems that the vast majority of Ecuadorians will stick to one of the two options mentioned above: continuity or reformism.
It remains to be seen if any of the candidates will obtain a victory in the first round and what will be the composition of the Parliament, which could make the administration more or less difficult for the new President.
