- In April Ecuador will choose his next president in a Runoff election between the conservative established Daniel Noboa and the left -wing lawyer Luisa González.
- Crime is a big problem for voters. Cocaine trade produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru has contributed to covered percentages of murder, kidnapping and extortion.
- The National Electoral Council of Ecuador said that with 92.1% of the counted ballot papers, Noboa received 44.31% of the Voite, while González received 43.83%. The 14 other candidates in the race were far behind them.
In April Ecuador will choose his next president in a Runoff election between the conservative established Daniel Noboa and the left -wing lawyer Luisa González.
Neither of the two won elections on Sunday, but they were both well ahead of the other 14 candidates and each within one percentage point of collecting 44% of the votes, according to the results on Monday.
The run-off elections set before 13 April will be a repeat of the Snap election of October 2023 that Noboa yielded a 16-month presidency.
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Noboa and González are now fighting for a full period of four years and promise voters to reduce the widespread criminal activities that built their lives four years ago.
The peak in violence The South American country is bound by the actions of cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru. So many voters have become crime victims that their personal and collective losses were a determining factor to decide whether a third president could change Ecuador in four years or whether Noboa earned more time in office.
Noboa, an heir of a fortune built on the banana trade, and González, the protégée of the most influential president of Ecuador this century, were the clear leaders prior to the elections.
Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, who re -elected, waves, waves after accompanying his running size, Maria Jose Pinto, to throw her mood during the presidential elections in Quito, Ecuador, on February 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Carlos Noriega)
Figures released by the National Electoral Council of Ecuador showed that with 92.1%of the counted ballot papers, Noboa received 4.22 million votes, or 44.31%, while González received 4.17 million votes, or 43.83 %. The 14 other candidates in the race were far behind them.
Voting is mandatory in Ecuador. Electoral authorities reported that more than 83% of the approximately 13.7 million eligible voters are issuing ballot papers.
Crime, gangs and extortion
Under the Noboa watch, the murder rate fell from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023 to 38.76 per 100,000 people last year. Yet it remains much higher than the 6.85 per 100,000 people in 2019, and other crimes, such as kidnapping and extortion, have been shot, so that people are afraid of leaving their houses.
“For me this president is disastrous,” said Marta Barres, 35, who went to the voting center with her three teenage children. “Can he change things in another four years? No. He did nothing.”
Barres, who has to pay $ 25 a month to a local gang to prevent or worse, said she supported González because she believes she can do that Reduce crime across the board And improve the economy.
Noboa defeated González in the drainage of October 2023 of a Snap election that was activated by the decision of the then President Guillermo Lasso to resolve the national meeting and thereby shorten his own mandate. Noboa and González, a mentee of former President Rafael Correa, had only served short stints as legislators before launching their presidential campaigns that year.
To win an outright Sunday, a candidate needed 50% of the votes or at least 40% with a lead of 10 points about the nearest challenger.
More than 100,000 police officers and members of the army were deployed throughout the country to protect the elections, including in voting centers. At least 50 officers accompanied Noboa, his wife and their 2-year-old son to a voting center where the president released his mood in the small Pacific coastal community of Olón.
Testing the boundaries of laws and standards of rule
Noboa, 37, opened an event organization company when it was 18 and then joined the Noboa Corp. From his father, where he held management positions in shipping, logistics and commercial areas. His political career started in 2021, when he won a seat in the National Assembly and was chairman of the Commission for Economic Development.
As president in the past 15 months, some of his Mano-Dura, or harsh tactics to reduce crime within and outside the country have been examined for testing the limits of laws and standards of direction.
Luisa Gonzalez, presidential candidate for the Revolution movement of the Citizen, speaks after polls were concluded on 9 February 2025 for the presidential elections in Quito, Ecuador. (AP Photo/Carlos Noriega)
His interviewed tactics include the state of internal armed conflict he stated in January 2024 to mobilize the army in places where organized crime, as well as last year’s approval Police -raid on the Embassy of Mexico In the capital, Quito, to arrest former vice -president Jorge Glas, a convicted criminal and fugitive who had been living there for months.
His frontal approach, however, also earns him voices.
“Noboa is the only person who hits the organized crime,” said retired German rizzo, who voted for re -elected the president, outside a polling station in Samborondón, a higher class area separated from the port city of Guayaquil by a river.
“Things won’t change”
González, 47, held several jobs in the government during the presidency of Correa, which led Ecuador from 2007 to 2017 with a fairly conservative policy with free spending and became increasingly authoritarian as president in his last years. He was sentenced to the prison in absence in 2020 in a corruption scandal.
González was a legislator from 2021 to May 2023, when Lasso dissolved the National Assembly. She was unknown to most voters until the Correa party chose her as a presidential candidate for the Snap elections.
Quito’s University of the Americas Professor Maria Cristina Bayas said that the result of Sunday was “a triumph” for the Correa party because polls projected a broader difference between Noboa and González.
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Esteban Ron, dean of the Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences at the International University SEK in Quito, said that Noboa will be forced to re -develop his campaign in the risk that he may have reached all his voting ceiling. Ron attributed the outcome to the problems that Noboa was confronted with during his administration.
Waiting for her turn to vote in Guayaquil, said architecture student Keila Torres that she had not yet decided who to vote for. Nobody, she said, will be able to lower crime about Ecuador because of the corruption of the deep -rooted government.
“If I could, I wouldn’t be here,” said Torres, who witnessed three robberies in public buses for the past four years and hardly escaped a carjacking in December. “Things won’t change.”
